Failing (and Falling) Forward

For the last couple of decades, John Maxwell’s concept of “failing forward” (title of his 2000 best-selling self-help book) has provided a kind of mantra for business school types, and its influence has spread into almost every other realm of endeavor, from elementary-school teaching to the performing arts. 

In a nutshell, Maxwell argues that great achievements are the result of failure, not success; for every triumph there must be a history of failing, getting up, trying again, failing, getting up, trying again, and so forth. Those who succeed do so because they refuse to translate a failure into “I am a failure,” and because they hold on to a belief in themselves and the value of what they’re doing even when nobody else believes. 

 As a general framework, I have no problem with this. It is true that the only successes worthy of the name are those that one had to strive for, the ones that did not come easily. And maintaining one’s self-worth in the face of negativity and rejection is indeed a gift. But. But sometimes you try, and try, and try, and there’s just a limit, set by nature, or society, or whatever, to your ability to fail forward. 

 As an adult ballet student, this hard fact remains – if you define success by the terms of the high art form (180 degree turnout and extensions, perfect lines, high, soaring jumps, flawless enchaînement, etc. etc.) you are going to fail. And not forward, just in an endless cycle. That is because the few, godlike creatures who actually succeed as professional ballerinas and danseurs have trained from childhood, virtually every damn day of their lives, and spend fifty or sixty hours a week, almost year-round, working their bodies and minds into form. They are not perfect humans, because nobody is. The art doesn’t come easily to them, because if it did, it wouldn’t be art. They are just particularly physically and mentally well suited to it, and gritty enough to compensate for their (less than normal) shortcomings so far as its ridiculous demands go. 

I want to emphasize this – they have failed in order to succeed, at who knows what psychic and physical cost, but their success is not attainable by everyone, or even very many ones. It is also not sustainable long term without growth away from the role of dancer into other roles (mentor, coach, arts entrepreneur, choreographer, teacher, artistic director…). Last summer, on a kick of reading dancer autobiographies, I was struck by the narrative arc that united them – the kid with dreams of dancing overcomes a lot of crap to make the most of their natural gifts, flourishes for a brief period as a young artist, encounters inevitable challenges of injury and illness (physical and/or mental), workplace bias, personal demons, interpersonal bad juju, works through these things, makes bad decisions and some good ones, gets chewed up in the press at least once, and finally emerges a more fully formed human and artist, but with very few to no years left in their active performing career as a ballerina/danseur. Just for reference, the books I read were by Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris, Jennifer Ringer, Misty Copland, David Hallberg, and Allegra Kent. I also watched the great documentary about Wendy Whelan, Restless Creature, which to me is one of the most poignant depictions of success, and its attendant failures, in the whole genre of artist biography. 

Biscuit Ballerina's "Falling Fridays" remind us that every swan has her bellyflops

So, thinking about this, and refreshing myself on Maxwell’s seven (why is it always seven with these self-help types?) principles for failing forward, I set out to try to understand how, as an adult ballet student, I can avoid the unjoyful and unhelpful tendency to adopt an unrealistic set of criteria for “success” in my dancing, and still embrace the possibility of moving forward and progressing in ballet. I don’t know how helpful this will be for others, but I am sharing it in the hopes that no matter what your level or your physical capacity, it at least suggests that there are alternatives to feeling frustrated and discouraged. 

 1. Reject rejection 

For Maxwell, this is all about founding your self-worth not on performance (that is, how well you complete a task in a given instance), but on confidence that when you screw up, you can learn from it and do better next time. Barre provides a magnificent opportunity to reject rejection. I would say that at least fifty percent of the time, when I’m doing a complicated barre exercise on the right side, I get something wrong and lose the thread for a moment, at least. But since we always turn around and do the same thing on the left side, those right-side screw ups can be the prompt for goal setting. “I forgot the port-de-bras in the middle section on the right – I will really focus on the left and make sure I do it in sync with the footwork this time.” On the other hand, if the thing I’m sucking at is something that I find technically difficult, for example, balancing in retiré, I cannot always just get over it that easily. I really beat myself up about balancing; it’s so rare for me to be “on my leg” despite all the drills and tips and practice I have sought out. So, for this, it’s all about setting a realistic goal for success; if I hold the balance for three seconds, where before I wasn’t holding it for even one, then good. It will have to do. 

 2. Don’t point fingers 

Well, do point your fingers, a bit, especially in allongé, but don’t play the blame game, is what Maxwell means by this. Own your failures. For reasons having to do with my family history and my personal wiring, I am all too good this. I am very willing to take the blame even when things aren’t my fault. However, in ballet class, I do find myself thinking, “I can’t do this because the choreography is too difficult” or “This music is way too fast (or slow),” or “That wasn’t explained very clearly!” Before his ignominy, Lance Armstrong wrote an autobiography called, It’s Not About the Bike, meaning that success or failure as a pro cyclist was not in his view about the equipment, but about certain characteristics of grit and ferocity (though in his case it was about the performance enhancing drugs, so…) Back to the pointing fingers: it certainly may be the case that the choreo is difficult and complex, the tempo challenging, or the instructor’s commentary a bit vague. That is not my fault, but it is on me to solve it for myself. Because this is adult class and not NYCB company class, I have options: ask for another marking, ask if we can take it at a slightly different tempo, request a clarification. Or I can do some self-talk and convince myself that I actually CAN do that particular enchaînement if I really keep my head in the game and anticipate the next step in the sequence all the way through. That the tempo is not a problem, it just requires either quickness or adage to be turned all the way up. Or I can go in the second group and watch the other dancers for their interpretation of the poor instruction. 

 3. See failure as temporary 

Never gonna be me.

Here it takes some work to get your mind around the problem, as articulated above, that you’re never going to be Polina Semianova (or pick your prima) or even the lowliest coryphée at a regional ballet company. I run across this a lot when I’m talking to other adult ballet students who at some period of their dancing lives thought they would pursue it as a career. Frankly, that ship has sailed, and you were not on it. Which is fine, because probably you have now and in the future will have further successes in other areas of your life. But the urge to fixate on what could have been, the almost-was, the unrealized dream… that’s not helpful and puts you in a permanent state of failure. 

Maxwell suggests that the goal is to view failure as an event, not a permanent state of being. Okay, so you failed to become a professional ballerina, or you were briefly there did not stick for whatever reason. Now the stakes are completely different. Now it’s about something else. The thing is to figure that out. Why are you doing this? And what are the terms of success under the current situation in which you find yourself dancing? 

 4. Set realistic expectations 

This is one of those obvious pieces of advice that so much easier to say than to do. Every Friday, as I’m wrapping up my work for the day (okay, most Fridays when I’m not scrambling to tie a bow on the messy package of the work week), I take a little time to write my goals for the next week. Over time, I have gotten less and less ambitious with what I put on my whiteboard. But even this week, as I was erasing the past week’s goals, I was looking at about a 50% completion rate.

 

In ballet, I try to set myself some goals too, and often it feels like I’m not even getting to 50%. For example, a couple of years ago, I was really frustrated and struggling with petit allegro. Speed, and just remembering the damn combinations, these were both difficult. Often, I felt like a really bad dancer after petit allegro, and the air would just go out of the rest of class for me. There’s nothing like tripping over your own feet and zigging when everyone else zags to make you feel like a clod. However, at some point, maybe it was last year when we were all taking classes on Zoom, I was doing petit allegro in my basement, in sneakers (concrete floor), and something flashed through my brain. “I am doing this? Yes! I am doing this!” This was probably a primo example of failing forward, or (since it had literally involved falling flat on my ass more than once) falling forward (or backward as the case may have been). 

5. Focus on strengths 

In Maxwell’s world, this means that while it is great to work on areas of your performance where you could improve, you should also take time to capitalize on and invest in the things you already do well. If you’re a great turner, enjoy those pirouette and pique combos and dance them up for all they’re worth. If you jump like a bean, milk it. One of the women I’ve been taking class with forever can balance unto the end of days. She just hangs out there in arabesque or whatever, and the music ends, and she’s still there, and basically, she could stay there forever. She’s the least self-aggrandizing human I’ve ever met, so it’s not a case of showing off. It is simply that she is so good at balancing, and she enjoys it, and she lets herself enjoy it. I admire that. Another way of thinking of this is that while it’s incredibly important to work and to fail, sometimes you can also coast on your skills, and enjoy the easy parts. Heaven knows there are few enough of those in ballet. 

 6. Vary approaches to achievement 

The Maxwellian exemplum for this is four millionaires who all made their fortunes young. Each of them, before the age of 35, tried seventeen different things (businesses, jobs, etc.) before achieving “success” (if you define success in dollar amounts, as business folks tend to do). Now, I tend to think that dollars in the bank is a pretty crappy measure of success unless it’s accompanied by other things like having added something of beauty or utility to the world in an ethical way, but either way, the point is that messing about a bit is a good idea. In dance terms, this is why one should always jump at the opportunity to take a class with a different teacher, or in a different style from ballet even if you “suck at hip hop” or “hate modern dance.” And when you’re in that Limon technique class and rolling around on the floor, you kind of have to “vary your approach to achievement” because just finding your way back to your feet without groaning and flopping about is a pretty big deal. 

 7. Bounce back 

There is a ton of evidence that people who frame failure as a learning opportunity rather than a condemnation tend to recover faster. Moving on and putting the misstep in the past, not dwelling on that bad thing that happened, this is a good mental habit. You could say that failure is just a plié; you need to go down before you can spring up. But if it were really that easy, Maxwell would not have made so much money reminding people of this basic reality. It is much more difficult to forgive and forget one’s own failures than just about anything else. 

In ballet, where a failure might result in an injury or humiliation, the burn can take a long time to subside. Last winter, I fell pretty hard and very fast (too fast to break the fall) on my face in a pirouette, and though I keep thinking that’s behind me now and it did not matter that much (all I got were some bruises and a fat lip), I find this little devil sitting on my shoulder sometimes, telling me I am going to fall again. The only thing I have found to do is to tell it “Okay, thanks for letting me know, now shut up.” I am hoping it eventually goes away. 

Just keep going...

As the ballet world becomes more accepting and open to the experiences of adult ballet students, maybe this will help change the game. Right now, there is a lot of attention being paid to the ways in which the culture of professional ballet is damaging to its most essential workers, the young, hardworking, poorly paid artists who make up the backbone of most companies. The different abilities, goals, and perspectives of adult students might provide some models for how younger, pre-professional students and their teachers, and professional dancers and their bosses could rethink success. For instance, asking students and emerging professionals to identify their own goals and develop strategies for achieving them, rather than always telling them what their goals ought to be. In my experience, this kind of reflective exercise is way more common in adult ballet than in other settings, and it has been incredibly helpful for me, even when it has taken years for me to reach a goal. I think it also helps teachers and coaches to understand what someone wants from the experience of being in class. 

Ultimately, each of us has to define the terms of success for ourselves, and be flexible about what that’s going to mean. At my age, getting to class on a regular basis, avoiding injury, dancing like I mean it, gaining one new technical skill in a year – this is about as much as it’s going to be. For a younger, more talented adult student it might be more ambitious. If I’m still dancing at seventy, it will surely be less so. At that point, it might just be not forgetting to bring my slippers to class!