Molding Healthy, Successful Artists with Mariaelena Ruiz

[00:11] Jennifer Milner: Welcome to Bendy Bodies with the Hypermobility MD, your podcast to learn all about the benefits and challenges of being bendy. This is co-host Jennifer Milner here today with Dr. Linda Bluestein. Before we introduce our incredibly special guest, a couple of quick reminders. Please subscribe and leave a review. This really helps get the word out because this podcast is for you.
[00:34] Today we have the great pleasure of speaking with Mariaelena Ruiz. Mariaelena began her studies in Caracas, Venezuela, where she was trained by prima ballerina Nina Novak. At age 14, Mariaelena became the youngest member of the Ballet Nacional de Caracas, and soon after she won third place junior division at the Jackson USA International Ballet Competition, receiving a full scholarship to continue her studies at the School of American Ballet in New York. She won the Best Couple Award and third place senior division at the Varna International Ballet Competition and also won at the Prix de Volodymyr in Paris.
As a professional, Mariaelena performed principal roles for many companies in the US and Europe, and between 2000 and 2006, Mariaelena danced in all Balanchine repertoire in the Suzanne Farrell Ballet. In 2000, she began teaching part-time at the Rock School for Dance Education and became full-time ballet master at the Rock School in 2006. In 2015, she started building and directing her new professional training program at Cary Ballet Conservatory, where she continues to coach and train the next generation of outstanding dancers and has been featured on the cover of Dance Teacher magazine.
Mariaelena has been a judge and guest teacher for the Youth America Grand Prix and Dance America competition in Argentina, and has also worked with the New York International Ballet Competition. She was featured in the award-winning documentary First Position. She has coached medalists from major competitions including Moscow IBC, Jackson USA IBC, Boston IBC, Prix de Lausanne, Youth America Grand Prix, and American Dance Competition. Her former students are dancing professionally all over the world in companies and on Broadway.
Mariaelena is now looking forward to even greater success as a teacher and a coach. She's been named the Outstanding Teacher at ADC IBC and most recently was the 2019 YAGP New York City Finals Outstanding Teacher. Hello and welcome to Bendy Bodies.

[02:47] Mariaelena Ruiz: Thank you. I am so excited to be talking to both of you and thank you for this opportunity.

[02:54] Jennifer Milner: Absolutely. We are excited to have you here, right, Linda?

[02:57] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Absolutely. I'm so excited. So happy to get to meet you.

[03:02] Jennifer Milner: Yes, we have so much we want to talk to you about. So let's just kind of jump into it. If we could start with your training. You grew up studying under prima ballerina Nina Novak and then danced for the Ballet Nacional de Caracas and then went to the School of American Ballet. So before you were even an adult, you had studied Vaganova, Cuban, and Balanchine methods. How did that shape you as an artist?

[03:27] Mariaelena Ruiz: Back then, I didn't know. It was kind of like evolving. But I was incredibly lucky. I had the strength of the Vaganova training very early on, the discipline that comes with that as well. And the speed and the dynamics of Balanchine training, that was incredibly necessary for me as well. And then my Cuban teacher — after I came back from SAB, and actually if we jump forward years and years after that — Magaly Suárez, she's the one who, after a really bad injury, kind of put me together again.
[04:09] So yeah, I was incredibly, incredibly lucky, and I've been trying to keep the best of all those techniques in the way I teach, and I think it made me a better dancer and also a better teacher.

[04:28] Jennifer Milner: It's interesting you say that because on one hand you can look at how it shapes you as an artist, right? How this technique gave you this and this technique gave you that, and you can pull it all together and be a more well-rounded artist. But it's completely different in how it shapes you as a teacher. So speak a little bit more about that.

[04:46] Mariaelena Ruiz: Well, I would add to my Vaganova, Cuban, and American training — I would add injuries and physical therapy. I'm very lucky that I didn't have many, but the two that I had were major. So I became very interested in alignment because one of them was a reconstructed big toe. It was an infection that went bad and went into the bone, and then they had to reconstruct my toe, and I was already at the end of my career. So I spent a year in physical therapy, learning to walk again, working on alignment. I spent a year in a pool. I became a prune because if they told me go to a pool twice a week, I would go — the dancer's mentality — I would go five times. So I became very interested in how to do things right because I had very little time. I was already in my 30s and I had little time to recover and do it right. And that's also when I went to Magaly and she retrained me again that year.
[06:02] I would say that a combination of all those things made me more interested in technique, more interested in how to apply the best things of all those techniques, and in strength. I had known all along because I had done it as a dancer — like in Cleveland Ballet, we had people from the Balanchine Trust come and set Theme Variations. I would immediately switch to my Balanchine training, with Suzanne Farrell. It was turning your brain immediately into Balanchine training, but keeping the strength of the Vaganova and the Cuban training. So I've been able to mix all of that.
[06:47] What the injuries did for me that I was not aware of was paying so much attention to doing things correctly and slowly, even if it was 10 repetitions, but they were done right. And of course, when you do three pirouettes and when you stay in a balance, that's great, but when you are thinking, "Oh my God, I can bend my foot again so that I can walk correctly," or that I can walk at all — it is a whole different spectrum. The doctors were telling me I was going to be lucky if I could walk again. I was like, no, I'm sorry. I had danced with the National Ballet of Canada. That's not going to happen. I'm going to do it. So I became very, very aware of physical therapy and of cross-training, which I had done throughout my whole career, but I became much more aware of it and interested in it.

[07:51] Jennifer Milner: Well, it's interesting you say that because I always say when I go teach a workshop at any studio or company, I say the only people who sign up for an injury prevention class are people who have already been injured.

[08:02] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Yes.

[08:03] Jennifer Milner: Because until that happens, people are like, I don't need to take that, I'm fine. But then once you've had that first injury, you realize, oh, this matters. I need to cross-train. I need to look at my technique. I need to look at that alignment. I need to address it in a different way. Whether you're doing Balanchine arms or Cecchetti arms, there are still some fundamental biomechanical issues that have to happen.

[08:27] Mariaelena Ruiz: Absolutely.

[08:29] Jennifer Milner: I love that you learned that kind of — I mean, it's painful that it happens at the expense of an injury, but you learned it early on in your career, at least as far as your teaching career. So that already started to shape who you were going to be as a teacher, which is fantastic. Now, you also are hypermobile, and have your own bendy body issues to go along with it. Science's understanding of hypermobility has changed a lot in the past ten years, and we've come a really long way in understanding it and learning how to work with it. So when you were training, were there teachers who helped you figure that out — how to use it and how to control it — or was that just sort of up to you?

[09:12] Mariaelena Ruiz: I didn't realize, and they focused on strength and technique a lot. They didn't focus on my hypermobility. It wasn't about, let's show the extension and stay there for 15 seconds or anything like that. They were very concerned about getting me stronger. And if I go back, I was the youngest and the tallest and the most bendy. So I would see my peers in the same class already doing fouettés, already doing things with stronger muscles — two to three years difference in age, you know, when you have an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old, it's a very different situation.
[09:56] I was part of that group because I was talented and they were pushing me forward, but I couldn't do some of the things strength-wise that they could do. Of course, I could hit a line and have beautiful shapes that they couldn't do as well, but I didn't have the strength. I didn't know where my center was and all of that. They did not focus on my bendiness. They focused on: you need to get stronger. And at the time it was relevés, repetition, and all of that. It was Vaganova. We had the same class in the afternoon. We knew the class, so you could really work on strengthening. Classical repertoire. I was introduced to classical repertoire very early on, and I think that's what shaped me too, because people say I can see variations or things that kids can do that are going to look really good on them. But I think it comes from my training. My teacher knew exactly what variation at what age, what comes next, and all of that. She had a very good progression.
[11:04] Of course, when you're that age, I was like, why am I doing Bluebird? Why am I not doing the variation yet? But you realize when you look back — I understand her. She was building you up. And I think a lot of the answers are in the classical repertoire and how you break it down. Because if you just have somebody do a variation without breaking down the step and where that step comes from in class, you're not doing anything.
[11:36] I would say that I would thank my early training that they never focused on my bendiness. I didn't realize that I needed more cross-training and more strength until I went to SAB, because I had long fourths to deal with, I had battus to deal with, I had speed and accents in. I do a lot of accents in now just so that we can connect more — sometimes I have to remind my team, my other teachers, that it's not accents in all the time. I began Pilates and Gyrotonics when I went to SAB, and that's when I found my core. The speed is what got me. I would see Diana White and Wendy Whelan and people in New York City Ballet dancing with that speed. They had long legs — in a Balanchine company, that's not an option, being tall and not moving fast.
[12:46] But for me, the long fourths were very difficult, coming from a hyperextension and hyperextended legs, with the back leg straight and pulling in. I needed a lot more strength for that. So that's when I became more into cross-training. But I do have to say, my teachers were not into overstretching me or anything like that. It was just the normal. Of course, they would see that it went beyond what other people could do, but it wasn't about that. And I think I was lucky about that.

[13:22] Jennifer Milner: That your teachers worked slowly and patiently?

[13:27] Mariaelena Ruiz: They worked slowly. They focused on strength. They didn't focus on the flexibility so much. They focused on less flexibility and more strength.

[13:42] Jennifer Milner: We had an earlier interview with Beck-Ann — one of your former students, Beck-Ann Sisk — and she said the same thing. She said that even with all her flexibility, she knew our listeners would want to know how does she get more flexible, and she said she doesn't. She works on the strength to hold that flexibility. So thank you for reinforcing that.

[14:03] Mariaelena Ruiz: It was great to hear that from her because when I got her, she was so hypermobile. Her legs were just away from her, and I was like, we need to focus on your strength. Lower your legs. We never did anything above 90 until we got to adagio or stretching. It's going to be there. It's not going to go away — it's not like you're not stretching, you're going to do your normal stretching. We never sat her on an oversplit. We never went over things. Of course, there was choreography created on her — not by me — that showed all that. But it wasn't like, grab your leg, stay for 30 seconds, and wait for people to clap. It was part of the artistry. It was part of showing how incredible her body was. But training her taught me a lot. I learned a lot about myself, I understood my teachers a lot, and I knew I had a diamond in the rough. I was like, I've got to do this right.

[15:09] Jennifer Milner: You have to do it right. That's exactly right. And going back to something you said earlier about the importance of picking the right variation at the right time — I think a lot of times these days we feel that pressure to let the 10-year-old do White Swan or whatever, whatever they think is going to bring them joy and let them show off their flashiness. And it's so important to have a long-term plan for a student and not just think, what's going to get me the highest numbers in this competition or the highest amount of scholarship this year? What's going to keep them dancing and what's going to bring them to fruition of all they can be five years from now? So I love that you have that structure and that thought. Let's do this one and then this one, and it's about the work and bringing you up slowly.
[16:18] Do you see some of that tension in classes — well, she's so good, I want to promote her, but also I want to give her a little more time to grow into her body and give her that strength?

[16:28] Mariaelena Ruiz: That's a great question. And people listening to this who work with me — parents and teachers that I've had meetings with and students — they'll know exactly what I mean, because I have a saying: an arrow, when you pull it back, where is it going to go? How far are you going to pull it back so that it can go where you want it to? So I'm pulling you back slowly so that I can propel you forward, so that you're going to have all the basics and all the strength to actually move forward quickly. I say, the sooner we get this basic stuff — and this is with my lower levels, because sometimes they look at me like, we're going to do slow relevés again — the sooner we get that on paper, the freer you're going to be.
[17:07] That is very important. And it comes with trust, also, with your teacher and with your coach. I try to convey that I have your best interest at heart. I am not perfect. I have not done everything perfectly, but I've done this for a long time and with some success. I don't expect you to be my first mistake, but if we realize that we've made a mistake, we'll fix it along the way and move forward. Communication is very important, and I think coming from the right place and the right experience — I know that slowing you down and breaking things down is going to make you better. So that is my philosophy, and if you accept that and if you give me the time... Because the other thing is that they want things yesterday, and so do I. But all you have is the work that you can do today and in this minute. Communication and trust, giving the coach and the teacher the time, giving yourself the time.

[18:24] Jennifer Milner: Right. And I do see a difference between a dancer who is not hypermobile and a dancer who is — in general, the hypermobile dancers just take longer. And I think it was Lisa Howell — is that right, Linda? We interviewed Lisa Howell and she talked about how when she has a hypermobile dancer, she'll pull her aside and say, listen, you may go on pointe later than others. I may keep you off pointe longer. I may try to keep you in a lower level longer. I want to give you time to get control of your body and get you stronger so that when you are ready to do those things, you just take off. So it's probably the same concept as the arrow — giving those bendy bodies a chance to get strong.

[19:11] Mariaelena Ruiz: They're going to be bendy their whole lives, but once they get it, it's fabulous — it's so beautiful to watch. But you're going to have to work at it the rest of your life, because it's going to be the same bendy body. It's just going to get stronger. The important thing is that you have the tools.

[19:33] Jennifer Milner: Yes. And you were starting to teach even while you were still performing. Do you feel like the fact that you were performing and dealing with injuries and teaching all at the same time kind of made you a better teacher because you were still dealing with those things yourself?

[19:53] Mariaelena Ruiz: I divide my teaching career. I started teaching because the contract we had with the Kennedy Center was not full-time. So I needed something to do while the company was off. I had just moved to Philadelphia, and they gave me some part-time work at the Rock School, and I'm so grateful for that. But I'm a firm believer that you have to be done with dancing to become a good teacher, and that's my experience.

[20:25] Jennifer Milner: Interesting. Can you explain why?

[20:27] Mariaelena Ruiz: Because it's not about you anymore. You have to be able to leave your dancing shoes outside the door when you come into the studio to teach. It's not about how beautiful you do things and how your pirouettes look. It's about how your student's pirouettes are going to look and how I'm going to help them. So I was still in dancing mentality, and then the injury happened. And that's when I say — I said it in another podcast — teaching found me. I was also going through a very difficult personal time, and the injury and the personal situation happened at the same time. Everything comes together, right?
[21:15] I was in the studio trying things for the students. They had just promoted me to full-time, and I became obsessed with getting better at what I was doing. And then the injury also helped me because I knew that I wanted to get better and I had this very small window of opportunity to dance for that last year, because I knew it would probably be done. After that surgery, I wouldn't be able to keep up with eight hours a day, or someone creating a ballet on you or anything like that. So I wanted to do it well. And I became very interested in how to help other people do it well.

[22:03] Jennifer Milner: I love that. And sometimes teachers aren't quite finished with their own career, and you can see that in the classroom — especially with some of the high-profile guest teachers. My dancers might walk out from a master class feeling almost worse about themselves, just comparing themselves to the teacher doing these beautiful demonstrations and thinking, oh, I'm never...

[22:09] Mariaelena Ruiz: Right. If you're going to be a coach and if you're going to take somebody's career from A to Z, it takes a different type of relationship. The coach and the teacher the dancer has has to be all about the dancer.

[22:34] Jennifer Milner: Right.

[22:53] Mariaelena Ruiz: I mean, I can still show certain things and my feet are going to point and all of that, but it's not about that. The teaching and the dancer and the student have to be your focus.

[23:05] Jennifer Milner: There has to be that emotional investment in it. Absolutely. So now that you are teaching dancers full-time, you said that you had started finding cross-training and working on proper technique while you were injured. Do you find ballet class in general sufficient for dancers, or do you encourage cross-training? Do you try to add conditioning exercises to your class? How do you help them figure out how to manage their bodies and be strong?

[23:35] Mariaelena Ruiz: I know that there are certain techniques and certain schools that say cross-training is not allowed. I believe in it because I practiced it and it helped me tremendously, and I've seen it in other people. So yes, my program has conditioning for men and conditioning for girls once a week. We brought in Progressive Ballet Technique, we have Pilates, we brought in Gyrotonics also. And even though we don't have a gym in our facility, I tell the guys and the girls that it's important for them to get their cardio up. We had a trainer come in and he had them running around this facility, which is really big, and the weather was nice still. Cardio is very important.
My approach in ballet class is that I don't stop between sides. You hear my corrections as you go. I have two groups in center — stage right and stage left. Everybody who's listening is going to laugh because they've known this for 20 years. If stage right is going, stage left is in a position. They're not stretching or anything like that. You're always on — because it's important to have that endurance, even if you're going to be in the corps de ballet for 30 minutes and changing. And I think the only challenge with ballet is that you break out of it very quickly and then you're required to do a pas or something that's 15 minutes long.
[25:24] So you have to integrate the class, make the class so that you continue that aerobic work, and include cross-training. I know running is sometimes hard on dancers' joints, but there's biking, there's a stationary bike and elliptical and things you can do even with your own body weight to keep your stamina up. I just don't think it's going to come from nowhere that you can do a 15-minute ballet if you don't cross-train. It's just not going to happen from one ballet class a day.

[26:07] Jennifer Milner: Right. Well, I always tell my dancers — that one-minute-and-27-second petite allegro combination is not going to get you ready for Snow. Snow is 11 minutes long.

Mariaelena Ruiz: Exactly.

[26:15] Jennifer Milner: You have to do something else. So you've been teaching for about 10 years now, part-time and full-time. Have you seen common problems and weaknesses with hypermobile dancers in general, other than that they're a little bit slower to start and they have to get control of their strength sooner? What have you observed with them?

[26:42] Mariaelena Ruiz: My eye goes immediately to the hypermobile one. I can spot them — it's like a sixth sense. The reality is that with hypermobile dancers, if you catch things early, it's much better. Especially in America, you get a dancer who either came from another school or came in at a recreational level and they didn't know it was going to become something serious. It's not like, you know, in Cuba where they'd go in and pick the one with the perfect proportions, the perfect femur, the perfect everything, and work with them since they're young. We are lucky — like with Beck-Ann, she came through the school and we were lucky to train her. I've had other hypermobile dancers, and we have some now in our program that are coming up. I call them Noodle Number Two, because Beck-Ann was Noodle Number One.

[27:55] Jennifer Milner: Right.

[29:00] Mariaelena Ruiz: I think we've all become aware — my teachers here too — of realizing when we have a hypermobile dancer and how we're going to approach it. We have the same thoughts and the same mentality, and we talk to each other as a team about how we're going to approach this dancer. We're all on the same page about slowing it down and bringing them forward a little bit more slowly. We talk to the dancer, we talk to the parents, because they feel frustrated. They have this beautiful body and now with Instagram, of course they hit amazing positions. You look at those feet and those legs and those lines. But it's like, how do you get from A to B? How did you get up there? It's discombobulated, but you hit the beautiful picture.
[29:56] So we are very aware of them as early as we can be. Some that haven't come through the school come from somewhere else and sometimes arrive with really bad habits. And I don't know what's worse — I think it's better to bring a dancer up from the beginning than to get them already with bad habits. Creating a blank canvas again is very hard. They get very frustrated, especially at an age where they want the wow effect, and they feel that that's what they're good at. So you're taking away something they think they're actually good at. We just approach them and say, listen, we've got to fix this, because you've also got to walk when you're 50.

[30:55] Jennifer Milner: Thank you for that.

[31:00] Mariaelena Ruiz: Cirque du Soleil and gymnastics — remember that gymnastics careers, if I'm correct, don't go past 21 or 22. It's a much shorter career. Ballet is an art form with longevity, and it's important that you stay healthy and able to have a normal life.

[31:28] Jennifer Milner: Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree.

[31:28] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Yeah, definitely. We all want to move as long as possible and as well as possible, but I think we don't always think of those things when we're younger, so I'm really glad that you stress that with your students. That's really fantastic. What trends have you observed over the years in terms of hypermobility, injuries, and career longevity? You've obviously been dancing for a long time and teaching for a long time. Have you observed any particular changes over that period of time?

[31:31] Mariaelena Ruiz: I've become aware of this maybe five or eight years ago. Dance has become much more popular on TV with all these shows, which is amazing — it's in everybody's living room or on their computer, and we have access to it. People think, I want to do that. But wanting to do that comes with a whole amount of training and hours and years. So there are a lot of people who have become interested in dance. Sometimes they become interested because of the overextensions and the wow effect, and there's been something positive about that, but I think it can be deceiving.
[32:53] I just hope that — from what I've seen in the last few years — it stays as part of the movement. It should not be about how long you're going to hold your leg and how long you're going to stretch. It's tough because it becomes very circus-like. I would love it to stay as part of the art form — an artistic movement, not about that. And that's what I've seen. It's become a little bit about that.

[33:39] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Yeah.

[33:39] Mariaelena Ruiz: And the kids think that's what they see on Instagram and they want to be that. I think our job is to guide them — that's fine and it has a place, but if this is the art form you choose, there are other ways.

[34:01] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Definitely. And have you seen that impact injuries amongst your dancers?

[34:06] Mariaelena Ruiz: I mean, Beck-Ann has been very lucky because she built strength since she was very young and we had her very young, and she kept all those things as she moved in her career. Yeah, I've seen hip injuries, I've seen back injuries. In our program, we've been very lucky — they mostly have overuse injuries, because sometimes you come from a program where you did three times a week and then you come into eight hours or six hours a day. We try to build them up, but it still needs some adapting. I will say I've seen people who have been trained with overstretching come to us, and yeah, they have some difficulties and some injuries.

Jennifer Milner: Sure.

[34:55] Dr. Linda Bluestein: And speaking of overstretching and other kids coming to you from other programs, what advice do you give to other teachers who are working with hypermobile dancers?

[35:09] Mariaelena Ruiz: Focus on strength. Focus on strength. Focus on technique. Focus on quality, not quantity. Focus on building their base strong so that they can have something to go from — to build a beautiful, I say a white canvas so that you can have a Picasso. You can't start a Picasso from an already painted Picasso. You have to have a white canvas. So give them that, and be okay to slow things down.
[35:41] I think it's just not popular. As a teacher, you feel pressured. This other teacher is going to use that flexibility because the solo they're doing will showcase it. So you lose students sometimes. People are afraid of losing students and they give in. Follow your instinct, follow your guidelines of what you know works, and educate yourself. Talk to people like Linda and Jennifer. Talk to other teachers and dancers who have had those issues and go from there. Don't give in to the pressure. I think that's important.

[36:30] Jennifer Milner: Yes.

[36:32] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Definitely. And what about healthcare professionals like myself and like Jennifer who work with dancers? What can we do? How can we work best with dance teachers to help the dancer optimize their career longevity?

[36:47] Mariaelena Ruiz: I think it's very important — what you're doing right now. Webinars and classes and communication with teachers. I think it's important. And we have to teach dancers and parents the difference between an injury and soreness. I don't want to sound old-fashioned, like you have to just push through pain. Of course, pain is telling you something. But if you went for a long run — and I use the running analogy because I run — and it's your first long run after a break, you're going to be sore. You make sure all those muscles are strong enough, but it's normal soreness from things you haven't done before.
[37:59] So I think it's important for physical therapists and doctors to be on the same page with the dancer. What have you done? What is different? Because sometimes it's confusing to teachers as well. Like, okay, I can't train you if you can't stand. But the other thing that happens is: if you can't do a tendu, you'll say you're okay to do petit allegro. How is that possible?

[38:29] Jennifer Milner: Because petit allegro is more fun.

[38:30] Mariaelena Ruiz: I'm okay now! Absolutely not. You stop that. If grand battement at the barre is the last thing you could do and you're done, you're not doing variations, you're not doing pointe, because I'm not building you up to do that.
I think it's very important to educate teachers and educate dancers about the progression that needs to happen. You can't dance if you didn't warm up properly. I do not allow choreographers — or myself — to come into the studio and work on dancers without having a proper class or a proper warm-up. I know people walk into the studio sometimes and just start, and if there's an emergency, of course things happen and your body's trained for it. But as a trend, as something that we allow, no. Training is the most important part. It's what's going to keep you going. It's where you're building your foundation. And that foundation is what you're going to show a choreographer or a director. It's what's going to bring you to the next level.
[39:56] Injuries — of course if you twisted your ankle and broke your foot, that's clear. But there's a lot of confusion around stress fractures. That's become a big issue — it's been about eight or ten years now. I didn't know anything about stress fractures when I was training. I probably had them. There has to be communication between the physical therapist, the doctor, the dancer, and the parent, and we all have to be on the same page, which is making the dancer better. But it can get to a point where everybody is slowing down and you wonder, when are we going to start moving? What's going to happen? They need to be healthy — mentally and physically. That's very important to us, and I think that would be a good ongoing conversation between doctors, physical therapists, teachers, and dancers.

[41:04] Dr. Linda Bluestein: I agree, and I love that you brought up stress fractures in particular because so many people — even a lot of my colleagues, physicians — think of bones as being more static. But we're constantly building more bone and losing bone, so if that balance is off, that's how something like a stress fracture can develop. So I'm really glad you brought that up specifically.
[41:29] You've had a lot of experience in the ballet competition world. You successfully competed yourself. You've been a judge and guest teacher for many of the major competitions, and you've successfully coached several young dancers to multiple wins. You've also been named the YAGP Finals Outstanding Teacher just this past year. In the competition world, extreme ranges of motion are often celebrated and encouraged for the wow factor, as you mentioned. How do you help your students work to their full potential while making sure they have the strength to do so safely?

[42:03] Mariaelena Ruiz: Focus on strength. And I must say that there are certain competitions that do not reward that. I see it in the judges' scores and the judges' written comments — 95% of the time they say focus on your technique, too extreme, that sort of thing. There are people out there who are interested in seeing more of your technique and your artistry. So if you go with the trend, it also depends on who your teacher is, what school you're going to, and what they are about.
[42:59] There are certain competitions, as I said, that are not into that and that are looking at your longevity, looking at your career. If you go into a ballet company, that extreme flexibility is going to be used maybe one or two percent of the time. You're going to be passing through an extension on your way to the next thing. It's just not going to be about that. So I hope it continues to decrease — the interest in that — and that as professionals and educators and judges and responsible competitions, we can guide dancers and teachers in the correct direction.

[43:47] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Excellent. What words of advice would you give to the frustrated younger hypermobile dancers who feel like they just cannot quite get it together?

[43:59] Mariaelena Ruiz: I hear you. I think if you can hang in there, if you can focus on your strength, if you can focus on your technique, your conditioning, finding those muscles that work for you — your body does not work the same way as somebody else's who has a different muscle form and less flexibility. It will be worth it. It will be worth the time. Once you get that strength and you get control of your body, it's just going to be so beautiful, and you're actually going to pass those people who are ahead of you right now. Because their bodies are easier to deal with in the beginning. But once you get that strength, once you get that control of your body and you know where you are, it's worth it. It's worth the wait.

[45:13] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Beck-Ann really went into a fair bit of detail about working with you and how you really helped her to understand how to work with her hypermobility and not to just rely on it — not to just use it and lean into it, but to really rein it in and control it.

[45:38] Mariaelena Ruiz: Yeah. Bring your legs down. Control everything from your core. Repetition, repetition, repetition. Go through your feet. Middle of your foot, slowly down, slowly. It might be boring, but it's going to pay off.
[45:57] There are also different types of hyperextension. Of course you have Beck-Ann, and I had the same thing. It's actually a lot easier when you're hyperextended and you also have a hypermobile foot. You can't think about the back of your knee — you have to think of where your hip aligns with your toe, and how you connect your inner thighs to all of that. You can never think from the back of the knee. It is very helpful when you have a foot that will allow you to be on top of your leg, so that you're not sitting back. When we have hyperextended dancers who don't have that range of motion in the ankle, it's a little bit harder because they sit back in the knee a lot more easily instead of getting on top.
[46:43] Core work, inner thigh work, bring your legs down, and move everything from your core and your inner thighs. Preach it.

[46:55] Dr. Linda Bluestein: I think we need a shirt for you that says, "Bring your legs down."

[47:01] Jennifer Milner: Slow it down. I know you can do it.

[47:03] Mariaelena Ruiz: Bring your legs down slowly. It is fun. Once you see them get it — when they first realize it, or they do that one thing and it's just above everybody else and their eyes light up — you're like, okay, see? That's what we've been working on for a whole year.

[47:28] Jennifer Milner: Totally worth it.

[47:29] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Yeah, because that floppy noodle — like you said, you could strike poses for Instagram photos, but you're not going to be able to move your body in the way you really need to, protect your joints, and keep them healthy. I'm recalling a dancer I went to college with and took class with every single day, and she was so floppy. Most of us were jealous of her incredible hypermobility. At that time I had no idea what hypermobility was, but I look back now and realize she probably never had someone like you to really work with her on that.

[48:11] Mariaelena Ruiz: Yeah. I think it's important to find the right teacher.

[48:15] Jennifer Milner: Absolutely.

[48:16] Mariaelena Ruiz: And educate yourself too. When I was growing up, it was Sylvie Guillem. There wasn't YouTube or anything like that, so any VHS tape I could get — you could see where her body was. Of course there was hyper-everything and all of that, but she had to have so much control in order to keep her balance on top of her foot so she wouldn't be falling away. I think she was the first extreme dancer in that sense. There was a lot of strength. She had to have a lot of strength to control her hypermobility.

[48:59] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Definitely. And if you could go back in time, what, if anything, would you do differently?

[49:06] Mariaelena Ruiz: I would have started with conditioning and alignment work earlier, because I became strong from repetition and from strong technique, but it wasn't until I found cross-training and Pilates and alignment work later in my career that I realized you can work smarter. You don't have to do so much. You can do enough correctly and it will work.
[49:44] Working on my stamina earlier also — because I was long and hypermobile, my stamina was not where it needed to be early on. I was kind of jealous of other dancers who were shorter and more muscular and more compact because they could do things right away, they could run through something just like that. I needed to do a variation three times, and back then the way you worked on your stamina was running your variation over and over. There are so many other ways you can actually save your body. Of course it's great to run your variation three times, and sometimes that's what you need to do, but I would have had a mix. If I had had a mix earlier on, I would have liked that.

[50:33] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Sure. And you've hit so many fantastic points. I feel like I need to go back through this conversation and extract some great quotes. Was there anything we didn't touch on that you wanted to mention?

[50:52] Mariaelena Ruiz: You covered it really well. I think what we started to talk about — there are different types of hyperextension and hypermobility. We were talking mostly about hyperextension in your legs, sitting back on your legs. I have something that I do: I have them stretch their knees with their heels apart, and then I have them bring their heels together in plié, and from there push the floor and stretch their knees as much as they can, making room in the hip and the inner thigh to stretch their knees. Because I find that if they sit back, of course they'll go on pointe and have that line and all of that, but you're not strengthening the right muscles for your leg to be as straight as it can be without sitting back.
[51:54] I think teachers need to be aware. Once you see a kid like that, educate yourself. See other dancers who have gone through it, see other teachers who have done it, and listen to people like Linda and Jennifer and podcasts like this and see how other people are doing it. That's important.

[52:22] Jennifer Milner: And lower your leg.

[52:23] Mariaelena Ruiz: Lower your leg. Lower your leg. I don't care. Build your strength, lower your leg.

[52:30] Jennifer Milner: If anybody gets anything out of our conversation today: build your strength, lower your leg.

[52:33] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Build your strength, lower your leg, and bring your heels together in first.

[52:39] Mariaelena Ruiz: Thank you. Let your knees pull from the inside all the way to your core, not from the back. I think it makes them feel — there are teachers who have asked me this. They say, Mariaelena, their knees are bent. I say, their knees aren't bent. You feel like you're halfway, but you shouldn't be halfway. You should be straight. You just have to give the room in the hip and in the rotation for that knee to stretch. Of course your knee in fifth position sometimes is going to bend a little when you close it, but you have to actually work toward not doing that. It all comes from the hips and your core too — on how you pull up by pressing down.

[53:21] Jennifer Milner: I absolutely agree, and I tell my dancers all the time: there's a difference between what your standing leg will look like and what your gesture leg will look like. Your gesture leg can be as wonderfully hyperextended and beautiful as you want it to be, but your standing leg — you can't just lock back into it and hang there and think you're going to be fine. There's such a difference between a standing leg and a gesture leg. Thank you for that.

[53:44] Dr. Linda Bluestein: And for those pearls we're adding at the end — rolling through the foot, in the tendu or whatever. That's something I'll watch sometimes and think, is there something wrong with their metatarsals that they never go through the demi-pointe? What's happening here?

[54:08] Mariaelena Ruiz: I think that's the part that I learned later in life. Once we talked about alignment and cross-training and doing all those things — because I became very strong, but I didn't have all of that in the beginning. And then it was such a difference once I started coming to SAB and working through my feet a little bit more, doing Pilates and Gyrotonics and seeing other dancers. That contact with the floor, that strength you create by pressing into the floor — it makes an absolute difference.

[54:45] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Absolutely. Definitely. And where can people best find you and learn more about the fantastic work that you're doing?

[54:48] Mariaelena Ruiz: My Instagram is @mariaelenaruizofficial. I have a website, mariaelenaruiz.com. And then our school, Cary Ballet — it's @caryballet on Instagram and caryballet.com. You can find me there.

[54:57] Dr. Linda Bluestein: We'll have links in the show notes to all those places. Fabulous. Well, it has been such a pleasure talking with you today. I learned so much. This has been so fantastic. And everyone, you've been listening to Bendy Bodies with the Hypermobility MD. Today our guest has been Mariaelena Ruiz, award-winning ballet master, teacher, and director of the professional training program at Cary Ballet Conservatory. Mariaelena, thank you so very much for taking the time to come on the Bendy Bodies Podcast with us today.

[55:48] Mariaelena Ruiz: Thank you, it was my pleasure. I learned so much and I'm grateful to have talked to you both.

[55:55] Jennifer Milner: Thank you. Thank you.

[55:55] Dr. Linda Bluestein: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Bendy Bodies with the Hypermobility MD, where we explore the intersection of health and hypermobility for dancers and other artistic athletes. Please leave us a review on your favorite podcast player. Remember to subscribe so you won't miss future episodes. Be sure to subscribe to the Bendy Bodies YouTube channel as well. Thank you for helping us spread the word about hypermobility and associated conditions. Visit our website at www.bendybodies.org for more information.
[56:27] For a limited time, you could win an autographed copy of the popular textbook Disjointed: Navigating the Diagnosis and Management of Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and Hypermobility Spectrum Disorders just by sharing what you love about the Bendy Bodies Podcast. On Instagram, tag us @bendy_bodies, and on Facebook at Bendy Bodies Podcast.
[56:53] The thoughts and opinions expressed on this podcast are solely those of the co-hosts and their guests. They do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of any organization. The thoughts and opinions do not constitute medical advice and should not be used in any legal capacity whatsoever. This podcast is intended for general education only and does not constitute medical advice. Your own individual situation may vary. Do not make any changes without first seeking your own individual care from your physician. We'll catch you next time on the Bendy Bodies Podcast.