KPLU Local News
(2010-04-11)
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Artscape: A Dancer's
Jordan Pacitti dances in PNB's performance of "Red Angels," by Ulysses Dove.
Photo by Angela Sterling
After careers with Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB), dancers have gone on to become chefs, clothing designers and pilates instructors. Others are pursuing undergraduate and law degrees.
PNB dancer Jordan Pacitti is an aspiring perfumer. But when he arrives in street clothes for an interview and fails to meet certain aromatic expectations - he doesn't smell like a thing - he apologizes.
"Unfortunately, I don't have have anything on," he says. "When I'm retired, I will be doused in fragrance constantly!"
Retirement for Pacitti arrives this June, after 11 years with PNB. But the 29-year-old says his leap away from ballet is well-planned and well-timed: he's at the top of his game plus he's ready to stop hurting.
My lower back hurts really bad," he says. "My hip hurt really bad in 'Sleeping Beauty' for some reason. I mean, it comes and goes with what you're currently working on. I mean, just waking up in the morning, taking those first few steps, the ankles are tight."
Being a dancer has been Pacitti's identity but behind-the-scenes, he's been making scented candles and colognes.
Ever since he was a kid, Pacitti has had a nose for perfumes.
"When I was 15 in New York City. I would just go to department stores. I obviously was a student and I had no money. And the allowance I got was for food, not for fragrance, unfortunately. But, I would use it for fragrance."
Dancers know there will come a time when they'll have to switch careers. Corps de ballet members, like Pacitti, generally retire around age 30; a principal can dance maybe into their 40s.
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| Pacific Northwest Ballet principal dancer Carla Korbes (with former PNB company member Casey Herd) in Kent Stowell's Swan Lake. Photo copyright Angela Sterling |
She's wanted to be a ballerina since she was 11, living in her native Brazil and seeing "Swan Lake."
"It wasn't just about the beautiful costumes and the tiara and the glitter," she says. "I loved how it made me feel."
She's been a professional dancer for 10 years. And could easily dance 10 more. But she's also spent a lot of time mulling over, "What's next?"
"I started thinking about it the moment I got a job. But I didn't do anything about it," she says.
But that's since changed. Korbes now takes college classes on-site at the ballet complex as part of a PNB program called Second Stage. Seattle University teaches three classes at PNB each year. Tonight, it's Introduction to Psychology.
"There are things about you that influence what you do and how you think," Dianne Learned of Seattle University tells her class.
Rick Redman helped start Second Stage in 1999 in part because he knows what it's like to start over.
"I had played professional football and was aware of the transition issues that guys had experienced and these were guys with college educations," Redman recalls. "So now you've got dancers who've been dancing since they were 5 and most of them stopped their education at high school."
Second Stage funds up to $8,000 per dancer in tuition money or in grants to help start a business. The dancers literally buy-into the program, contributing one night's salary every year. Public donations and PNB also helps fund Second Stage.
For Korbes, who hopes one day to earn a college degree, the on-site classes have allowed her to stretch her brain.
"I think about dance so much and now I can think about rocks. We did geology. So I just went home to Brazil and I was looking at all the rocks and I was like, This is that and this is this.' My parents were like, What are you talking about?'"
These days. Korbes is talking a lot more than just about dance.
For Pacitti, Second Stage has pushed him closer to realizing his new dream.
He stretches before morning ballet class while other dancers put masking tape on their toes.
He broke his right foot in 2004 and recovered by watching lots of TV. Then he broke the left one.
"That was the defining moment. That's when I sat back and I was like, I said, I know I have to find something else. Even if it's just a little hobby. It's a little passion. I need to start looking into the next chapter.' "
Second Stage helped him launch his Jordan Samuel Fragrances line of products, which will be his singular focus come June.
But first, it's six more weeks of dance class and performances until a ballet career comes to an end.
Florangela Davila KPLU News.
Pacific Northwest Ballet
PNB's Second Stage program
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