Sharing the love of Christ through ballet
Jordan Raynor sits down with Julianna Slager, Co-founder of Ballet 5:8, to talk about how her team uses ballet to engage people in conversations about faith, the remarkable parallels between her own story and the story of Beth Pearson, the fictional character from the hit show, This is Us on NBC, and why she’s all in on this concept of being a “master of one.” You can follow Julianna's work on Instagram at @JuliannaSlager.
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0:00:04.8] JR: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I’m Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who are looking to do their most exceptional work, not for their own fame and fortune, but primarily for the glory of God and the good of others. Every single week, I’m hosting that conversation with a Christian who is pursuing world class mastery of their vocation. We’re talking about their path to mastering the thing that they’re world class at, we’re talking about their daily habits and routines and how their faith influences their work.
Today, I’m excited to share the very first conversation I recorded for this podcast all the way back in June of 2019. I was up in Chicago for a couple of days and while I was in town, I knew I wanted to sit down and talk with Julianna Slager. Julianna’s fascinating. She spent the first chapter for career mastering the art of ballet. She was a professional ballerina, getting paid to dance all around the world. Today, she’s mastering the art of entrepreneur as the cofounder of Ballet 5:8., a ballet company based in Chicago with a remarkably well-formed theology of work and creativity.
Julianna and I sat down to talk about how her team uses ballet that is not overtly evangelical to engage people of all different faith backgrounds and conversations about Christianity and the gospel. We talk about why she’s all in on this concept of being a master of one and we talked about the remarkable parallels between her story and the story of Beth Pierson, the fictional character from my beloved, This is Us on NBC.
If you're a fan of This is Us, you’re really going to enjoy that section of the interview. This was the first episode I recorded so the format’s a little bit different than the other episodes that are now available for you to download but the conversation was so good, I don’t think you guys are going to mind at all.
Without further ado, here’s my conversation with Julianna Slager.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:02:09.5] JR: I’m very excited to be joined today by Julianna Slager. Hello, Julianna.
[0:02:13.9] JS: Hi.
[0:02:14.5] JR: Julianna is the cofounder of Ballet 5:8, a ballet company and studio that is based here in Chicago, is that right?
[0:02:23.9] JS: Yeah, that’s correct, we’re in the south suburbs in Orland Park.
[0:02:25.9] JR: Okay, tell us a little bit about Ballet 5:8. What do you guys do and then we’ll go back in the beginning, kind of retrace your steps and how you came about founding this thing?
[0:02:35.0] JS: Currently, Ballet 5:8, we’re almost eight years old and we have a national touring company with 14 dancers and then we have a school of the arts that has four campuses across Chicago land and in the suburbs. And our main goal is to create art that comes from a basis of faith. What we do is all based on our faith as Christians, but the way that we implement that is not always overt.
And so, I think that’s one of the unique things about the ministry. Both in the company and in the school is that we’re trying to find ways to show people the love and the joy of Christ, but maybe doing it in a different way than what you would see in a typical ministry or on a typical Sunday morning.
[0:03:11.8] JR: You’re saying, the T in Ballet is not a cross in your logo, is that what you’re saying?
[0:03:15.2] JS: That’s what I’m saying.
[0:03:15.5] JR: Okay, all right, great. That sounds really good. So, we’re going to dive deep into that in a minute, this is a topic that everyone listening knows I’m super passionate about, right? This idea of you know, C.S. Lewis, once said, “we do not need more Christian books, we need more Christians writing great books.” I think that applies to business, I think that applies to ballet and anything that we’re creating in culture.
So, we’re going to dive deep in a minute. Let’s go back to the beginning, you’re a ballerina yourself?
[0:03:41.3] JS: I am, yeah.
[0:03:43.5] JR: Where did your love for ballet start? Was this something like early on as a little girl you always wanted to be a ballerina, kind of tell us your story and how you got to this point in your career?
[0:03:53.3] JS: Yeah, my parents, the way they would tell the story is that there was never a day I didn’t dance. I kind of just was that kid that was super hyper active and always running around the house and just really busy and loved music and loved dancing.
My dad is a nuclear engineer and my mom is a nurse. So, they knew nothing about dance, well, I should say about dancing, they knew about the arts, they both played music, my mom is a pianist, my dad plays the bass. I had that musical influence growing up but they never expected any of their kids to go into the arts which is ironic because out of the seven of us, at least three of us –
[0:04:25.8] JR: Seven kids?
[0:04:26.1] JS: Made it a career. Yes.
[0:04:27.5] JR: Wow, that’s crazy. We were just talking about the craziness of three. Three of you guys are in the arts, what are your two siblings doing in the arts?
[0:04:34.7] JS: Yeah, I have one sibling that’s kind of a jack of all trades. She teaches acting, and she teaches visual arts. She actually does some dance as well and then I have a younger sister who is actually a trainee with Ballet 5:8. She’s also gone the ballet route and then the youngest is deciding but right now, she’s very into acting and has done a lot of acting and a little bit of film.
[0:04:52.4] JR: That’s awesome. So, you grew up, you’re always dancing, what is the trajectory of your life look like from there? You grew up, you’re in high school, how do you get to this place?
[0:05:00.1] JS: So, early on in ballet, you kind of have to decide if you’re going to go for it, it’s kind of like the Olympics where if you’re going to do it, you have to get serious pretty quick. So, as a kid, I loved it, my parents could see that, my teachers were like, “hey, you know, this kid has some talent. If you want to take her in that direction, she can do it.” And so, I remember probably being nine or 10 and my dad going, “hey, is this something you really want to do, because if it is, we have to kind of go for it now.” And I remember thinking about it for about five seconds and going, “yeah, I would love to do that.”
“This is what I’m passionate about, this is what I love, this is what makes me feel the most like myself and makes me feel the most alive.” I remember The Chariots of Fire, you remember that old movie? I always felt like I was that main character and all he talks about is how when he runs, he can feel the pleasure of God and that was me as a teenager.
That was just my happy place, that is where I felt the most – I could serve God through the gift that he’d given me.
[0:05:49.2] JR: So, we’re going to go back to your story in a second. Sorry, I’m talking as much as you are in this interview but I swear, Julianna has not read my next book, Master of One, but she’s basically quoting directly from it. So, I tell the story of Eric Liddell and talk about – I think when you get really masterfully good at something or in the process of developing mastery, you feel God’s pleasure, which is such a spiritual thing that it’s like very hard to like pinpoint what that’s like, you felt that, right?
But there is this almost indescribably sense when you are doing that thing. So, for me, it’s starting new businesses or bringing new products to market like books. For you, it’s ballet, and there’s just this deep over righting sense of, “yes, I’m being fully me, fully human,” right? You make this decision at nine or 10, you’re going to go big on this one thing which I love, I want to come back to that in a second. So what does that look like?
So, you're nine or 10. Are you like really intense into ballet all throughout middle school, high school.
[0:06:44.2] JS: Yeah, no, I was. Probably to an unhealthy degree, if I’m really honest because I was a one track minded, still am, you know, that’s me. I just, when I get my thing, I zero in on it and I go for it and I hold nothing back. My husband would tell you that, when I’m in that zone, he’s like, “okay, everybody clear out, leave her alone, she’s focused,” and that was me as a kid. I loved it, I had no problem giving up all the normal kid things. You know, you don’t do a lot of going to high school dances or you know, doing these big youth group trips because you're always in the studio and you’re always rehearsing.
[0:07:12.7] JR: There’s tradeoffs.
[0:07:13.7] JS: Right. But to me, that sacrifice was no big deal, it was something that was like, “yeah, of course I want to give everything up because this is who I am.” So, that was a huge art of my life and about 15 or 16, I started to get to a level where I could actually realistically see myself pursuing dance as a profession. I started to get contract offers, I started to get more and more, I guess acclaim for being as young as I was. Bind of getting out there into the dancing which is not easy, it’s like music or any other kind of an art where you have to really find your niche because people are looking for something very specific in an artist.
And that’s not the same for every different company. You really have to start finding your niche and where do you fit.
[0:07:51.8] JR: What is a niche look like in ballet?
[0:07:54.1] JS: There’s different styles of ballet, there’s classical ballet, there’s more contemporary styles, there’s different aesthetics and different ways that different companies want you to move. And so, you have to kind of figure out what is your natural bent and what direction can you go in? Probably similar to saying okay, what kind of book goes to which publisher, it’s similar with a dancer.
[0:08:12.7] JR: Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. Julianna and I were talking before the interview and I told her, I’m totally ignorant about ballet. Both the art, but also the business. Help me understand how you become a professional ballerina, what does that track look like? So, you mentioned your 15, 16, sure to get contract offers, is that with the ballet company? How does that work?
[0:08:33.8] JS: Yeah, so, what you have to go through is this process of intense training where you’re training five or six days a week. You work with guest that come in, a lot of bigger schools will bring in different guest artist and choreographers, people that you can work with and you kind of start from there building a resume, possibly getting small gigs where you know, you’re getting 50 bucks to do a small side job and that’s kind of where it starts, where it begins.
Again, kind of like music where you start building your resume with these little gigs that come by and then eventually the holy grail of ballet is to get a contract offer with a company where you’re getting paid to dance nine to five, essentially.
[0:09:09.3] JR: That’s amazing.
[0:09:10.1] JS: It’s incredible. And so, that was the age where I started getting little job offers and little things coming my way and different people asking me to come and guest artist in different little productions and things like that. That was what showed me I think that not only did I have this love but “hey, I can actually do this.” Even getting 50 bucks to do a small little part in a ballet production kind of as a kid goes, “okay, wait a second, maybe I can actually do this as a career. It’s not just a pipe dream anymore, it’s starting to become a reality.”
[0:09:35.8] JR: It’s like that initial traction, right? You’re validating what you think your – in the language of my next book, one thing is, right? And building on top of that and building momentum there. So, you get this contract offers, who’d you end up signing with?
[0:09:46.7] JS: Yeah, I actually ended up having a couple of different people to choose from and this was kind of a crisis for me in a good way because I saw that there was a lot of good in the dance world. But there’s also a lot of mentality that says, “okay, if you’re going to be a dancer, you have to do anything that you’re asked to do. I was also a young Christian at that time.”
And so, I’m looking at all of these different offers that I’m getting and I’m looking into their repertoire which is kind of the fancy word for the dances they do on stage and I’m going, “okay, I could do this, like Sleeping Beauty, that’s great, that’s beautiful, it’s a classic.” But then I’m looking at some of these other shows going, “ooh, that puts me at conflict with who I am as a Christian.” That was a difficult crux for me as a young woman going, “okay, am I going to choose to kind of go with the typical ballet route and dance with a mainstream ballet company and have to make some compromises that I’m not really thrilled about or am I going to choose a different route?”
That was the time where I started looking into what does it look like for a Christians and arts to come together? And is there such a thing out there? The one place that there was at that time was Ballet Magnificat!, which is a Christian ballet company in Mississippi.
[0:10:50.1] JR: Ballet in Mississippi.
[0:10:51.9] JS: Right.
[0:10:51.7] JR: All right, okay.
[0:10:53.1] JS: Jackson, Mississippi.
[0:10:54.7] JR: You would expect New York, you would expect Chicago, but Jackson, Mississippi, interesting.
[0:10:59.7] JS: Now, Kathy Thibodeaux is the founder and that’s actually where she’s from. Kathy Thibodeaux is an amazing woman, she won the silver medal in the International Ballet Competition in the 80s, yeah. She’s a very accomplished dancer, she started a company, it’s all faith based and so when I saw that I thought, “wait a second, okay, maybe there is a way to combine these two things in a way that doesn’t force me to compromise something that I believe in.”
So, I got a contract with them as a trainee which is your lowest rung of a ballet company and I went down there to start working with them and to start learning about what does it mean to combine art and faith and how can that look? That was an incredible experience, I was there for a few years and learned a lot from Kathy and the other staff members. And I grew a ton in my faith, I really credit them with helping me to understand how Christ and his passion as a creator as the creator can feed into what you can do as an artist.
[0:11:51.1] JR: I love it. And we’re going to come for that in a minute. You're a Ballet Magnificat!, is that it? For a few years, did you leave from there to start Ballet 5:8?
[0:11:58.6] JS: I didn’t, there was a little interim, what happened is, I actually got engaged to my handsome husband –
[0:12:03.5] JR: Who is sitting right here by the way. We’re acting like he’s not in the room, but he’s sitting right here. Hey, Jeremy.
[0:12:08.5] JS: That’s’ right. After that, that’s when I moved to Chicago because there was a clear crux there for me, he was a student at Moody Bible Institute and we couldn’t be married and live in Jackson, Mississippi and also live in Chicago.
[0:12:19.7] JR: Chicago.
[0:12:20.5] JS: There was a choice that had to be made there, that was another big leap of faith going, “okay, I don’t really know how dance is going to take shape in my life after this. I know I love it, I know it’s my calling but I also know that this relationship is something that’s also my calling, so how is that going to work?”
So, I stepped out in faith and I moved up here to Chicago, actually with one of my best friends. We were – Amy and I, Amy Sanderson, she and I were best friends at Ballet Magnificat! and then we moved to Chicago together kind of for this intern year while I was engaged and planning my wedding, she was going to college. and that was kind of a beginning of ballet 5-8 in its own way. Amy is actually my cofounder and now the executive director of Ballet 5:8.
And so, the two of us moved to Chicago, two young kids and not really knowing what our next steps were going to be. So, we just started getting work in Chicago and dancing and teaching and choreographing and Amy actually worked at the Joffrey Ballet in their administrative wing. So, we started learning skills that at that time, we had no idea that they were going to be a part of the founding of Ballet 5:8, but God always has his way.
We started learning all these different things about Chicago and about the arts thing here and how ballet works in the Chicago scene and what companies there are and what influences there are. So, that was a couple of years. Our year together and then our first year of marriage just kind of learning Chicago dance.
[0:13:36.8] JR: Yeah.
[0:13:37.4] JS: And so, from there, we started to go, “wait a second, there’s really no voice here that has any sort of a faith based whatsoever.” But there’s definitely a hunger for it and I think in dance, you often see somebody’s world view. Because when you’re choreographing, it comes from a pretty deep place for anybody, not just for a Christian. And you start to see, “wait a second, there’s a lot of sadness in this pieces, there’s a lot of struggle, there’s a lot of things here that are almost crying out to you saying we need more than this.”
“Where is the light, where is the redemption, where is the hope?” And we just started to just hear that silent scream if you will and go wait, “how do we as Cristian people speak into that and come in to this industry with a different mindset and with a different set of things to show through our art?”
And so that was our very beginning of going, “we want to create a place that’s founded on a basis of faith but that creates art that is accessible and arts that speaks and art that’s conversational with the people here in Chicago.”
[0:14:36.5] JR: Julianna, it’s very on message, she’s basically articulating the mission statement of Ballet 5:8. As you guys have articulated on the website, the mission of 5-8 is to engage communities and conversation of life and faith through innovative storytelling and breathtaking dance. You’ve mentioned this a few times now, right? What does ballet, what do the arts look like for the Christian? I think we all know deep down that it’s not as cheap and simple as making all of the – this is the one I keep coming back to, making all the T’s and our logos crosses.
What does that look like in ballet? Speak to us as if we know nothing about ballet, I mean, we’ve all seen The Nutcracker. I think we can establish that as a baseline, but how does the Christian approach ballet differently? Because of our relationship with Christ?
[0:15:18.0] JS: Yeah, great question. So, Blain Hogan is actually another artist here in Chicago. He worked at Willow Creek for a while and I heard him say this once and I think it perfectly encapsulates my thoughts on the issue and it’s that Christian art has to have both grits and grace. And it has to show both the ugliness and the darkness of sin, but then also the hope and the beauty of redemption.
I think that that has really helped me to articulate how I feel on this subject. Because you’re right, not every ballet or every piece of art needs to have a cross in the background, or even needs to be a bible story specifically. But I think as a Christian, you also have a responsibility to lead people from darkness to light from disperse to hope and the show that there is something greater than ourselves.
And I always think of when I’m choreographing a ballet, how do I start to get people to just know who got in. Because they can’t want to love him and if they don’t know it.
[0:16:10.4] JR: So, how does that happen in ballet. I’m going to stop for questions. Let’s go. I agree that this habit’s in the arts and I struggle a lot with this on film. I’m a big believer in we do not need more “Christian movies”, it’s the C.S Lewis quote. We need more Christians making great movies about redemption and hope and topics that are near and dear to the Lord’s heart. We need more movies about adoption, we need more issues about gender relations in this country and the world and race relations.
But let’s take a great ballet piece that isn’t a bible story, it’s not a reenactment of Nehemiah, that sounds like a terrible ballet piece. Tiptoeing around the wall. How does just an exceptional piece of ballet show people God? And lead to those conversations or is that important? Is it important for that to lead to a conversation about faith?
[0:17:00.3] JS: Right. That’s such a good question. I have two-part answer. One is that I think there are great works of art that can reveal things about God that didn’t intend to. I see that all the time in ballet where I, as a Christian, I see a work by George Balanchine, Serenade, right? Really famous ballet. I see the beauty of God in that but I see that because I already know who God is.
If you're viewing that from a lens of not knowing who God is, you can still appreciate the beauty but you're not necessarily driven to know the creator. I think that that is an interesting distinction because I think it’s important for us as Christians to go, “okay, yeah, that is beautiful, it is transcendent, it is amazing art, but unless you already understand the creator, you don’t realize that that is coming directly from him.”
I think the goal as a Christian dance artist for me as a choreographer is to go, “okay, I want to create something that does actually distinctly point you hack to who God is.” I think that’s always a challenge, it’s a huge challenge. I think that for me is probably the hardest part of creating any dance work, specifically because dance doesn’t have words.
[0:18:03.2] JR: Sure.
[0:18:03.7] JS: You’re using movement and you’re using emotion and you’re guiding people through almost this visceral and unexplainable experience toward who God is.
[0:18:14.0] JR: Let’s take a real concrete example from something you’ve choreographed for Ballet 5:8. Give us an example of what that looks like? Maybe kind of the best example you can think of. Of how, without words, right? Through movement and music. You feel like there is a piece that clearly points people to the greater.
[0:18:32.5] JS: Yeah, absolutely. There is a bill that we did this past year and it was called Compass.
[0:18:36.4] JR: A bill? I’m learning all sorts of new terminology, this is great.
[0:18:39.0] JS: Is that great? I know.
[0:18:40.2] JR: A bill, is it called a Compass, okay.
[0:18:42.7] JS: And so, Compass was about all these different cultural issues that we’re facing here in the 21st century and it was a look through the lens of heaven towards those issues. And so, that was something that I thought was an incredible way to share God’s heart because I think sometimes people coming in to a ballet, they’re just coming in to enjoy, to see beauty, to see great art and that’s wonderful. But I think they come out even more satisfied and even more inspired when they get to see a piece of art that doesn’t just give t hem beauty, but gives them something to think about on the way home.
And so, that was what Compass really did and it had five short ballets in it. The first one was called All God’s Children. That was based on a poem by [inaudible 00:19:22] Truth. That one really spoke to race relations. And my thought behind it was this thought of imagine better to imagine the world that we’re in but imagine what if, instead of going the way we’ve gone over the past hundreds of years which has been no the greatest way to go.
What if we, as a culture had gone the opposite direction and had been able to approach this issue and see the beauty and the differences in the races? What if that had been the story of the world rather than the story that we currently have? And so, I reimagined the world from the beginning.
In the beginning there are these four children that are created very Eden like and they grow up together and they’re best friends and they all are just happily living together and you start to see them develop different characteristics and traits that make them distinct from each other. And then they go out to explore the world and they leave and they grow up and as they’re growing up, the create worlds that are very much like themselves.
[0:20:16.9] JR: That’s cool.
[0:20:17.7] JS: Yeah, and so, over the course of the ballet, they start out with just like blue shoes for one of the world and purple shoes for one of the worlds. And then over the course of the ballet, they add on different things until their entire world is blue, their entire world is purple and so on.
So, you start to see the development of culture and you start to see these siblings forget that they are one and the same as they get more and more immersed in their own characteristics and their own way of living. And then there is this crisis moment where they all come back together, they’re all coming back together to the same place where they started and they see each other and there’s a faint recognition that, “hey, I know you and I remember you but you look very different.”
And there’s this apprehension and there’s these four different worlds that come together and they start to almost fight with each other. There starts to be this kind of intrigue of, “wait a second, you don’t look like me, you don’t dance like me, you don’t act like me. I’m not sure if we can really live in a harmony.” You see then kind of go through that crisis moment and one of them actually stands up and says hey, “you know what? You should all be blue because blue is clearly the best.” It’s a little bit silly, it’s a little bit comedic and she kind of does this really top –
[0:21:20.2] JR: Not that comedic. It’s a little poignant, yeah.
[0:21:22.7] JS: A little too real.
[0:21:23.5] JR: Yeah. So, you start to see that and all the characters think it through and then the yellow group comes in and says, “actually you should be yellow.” And then we go through to the very last group, which is the youngest child. She is the youngest daughter of the four siblings. She comes up and she begins to say, “well, you should be all like me.” And then she takes pause and then she remembers that, “wait a second, this costume that I am wearing isn’t actually the full version of me.”
And so, she actually takes it off and underneath, they are all wearing the same thing and the color, our costume designer is brilliant. She took this orange rust tone that looks like if you mixed every skin tone on earth together it probably what she would come up with. So, it is this beautiful color and they all unbuttoned their outer garment and they look around and everybody starts to realize. There is this cannon cacophony almost of everybody recognizing, “wait a second there is more to me than just this outer layer.”
And they have this realization that though their culture is beautiful and how they all love to dance and to be how they were created to be, underneath that is this deeper layer of being brothers and sisters.
[0:22:23.8] JR: I love it.
[0:22:24.3] JS: And so, they end the ballet that way. And it is just a beautiful picture because the music actually ends and it is silent and they hold hands. There is 25 of them holding hands like little kids and they just skip into a circle as lights darken.
[0:22:36.0] JR: That’s amazing. I really want to see this. So, this is The Compass?
[0:22:38.7] JS: Yes.
[0:22:39.2] JR: That’s beautiful. So, the mission of Ballet 5:8 though is to take this great piece of art and have it spark conversation. I imagine you don’t get insight into many of those conversations, right? People leave the ballet; they get in their car and you’re just praying that this sparks a conversation. How do you with the mission with that you guys have outlined in Ballet 5:8, how in the world do you measure success? By the way, I think this is something that writers really struggle with, right?
You can measure success by Amazon ratings and reviews, but I hear all the time stories from people like, “oh yeah, I was talking to somebody the other day and they said they read your book and it changed their life.” I’m like, “well, that would have been nice to know from that person.” You just never hear those things. How do you define and measure success with something like that?
[0:23:23.7] JS: Right, so there is three ways actually and that is interesting because we have that crisis a little bit, organizationally, I think year four. And we went, “wait a second, we know that what we are putting out there is good and the message is good, but how do we continue to further those conversations?”
So, we did three things. One of them is we have our really tight-knit audience base, our super fans if you want to call them that.
And we have expressed to them, “hey, this is really the mission. This is really the goal. We’re asking you to bring your friends and to take them out to dinner, afterwards you’re out for coffee the next week and talk with them about the ballet.” And so, that is a part of our audience base that is getting involved in the very mission itself so that the torch is passed from the artist on stage to then the people that have brought their friends and their brothers and their sisters and their fathers and their mothers, who then act as the catalyst for that conversation.
[0:24:12.2] JR: I love that so much.
[0:24:12.8] JS: So that is part of it and that’s been really effective. The second way is we actually added a component to the end of the show called the Talk Back. It’s a 20-minute segment and I think there has been other organizations that have used the similar model. That’s been something that I really loved and we’ve gotten so many wonderful questions and wonderful things that have started through that, the same bill, Compass has a piece called, The Mother, which is about abortion.
It’s actually based on a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, who is not a believer, but she shows her experience with abortion and just how it wrecked her. I mean her struggle between doing what she thought she had to do, but also loving these kids deeply and feeling that intense tension. So that piece for instance brought up a lot of questions in the Talk Back, which was incredible because we had such an open dialog and abortion is so polarized. It is hard to have an open dialogue about abortion.
But I have seen that happen through this ministry specifically and with that being such a hot topic. It is just becoming even more polarized. I think we need as Christians to provide more forums where we can have that healthy discussions and even bringing it from Gwendolyn’s personal perspective, I felt was a much more effective tool to understand it and for me to just say because I haven’t had that experience, for me to just say my opinion on it doesn’t hold a lot of water.
But when you are talking about Gwendolyn Brooks who grew up in the south side of Chicago, experienced many of the issues that come from growing up in a family where she didn’t have means and she is trying to take care of these kids and she just felt that there was no way out for her.
So, expressing some of those issues through that lens and then having that talk back afterwards has been an incredible way to see people go, “wow, okay I can look at this issue from a little bit broader perspective instead of honing it on just what I think is right. I can take a step back and really listen and really hear and really asked good questions.” So that’s been the second aspect and I think that has been really, really neat.
The third aspect is actually more online and this is something that is really up and coming, but we have been trying to formulate a more of an online Talk Back and forum. Through our social media channels, through our email channels. We send out an email the day or two after the performance saying, “hey, what struck you? What did you find to be compelling? What are the questions that you have?” And if it is a question that’s really needing more of an answer, they actually do forward those to me.
And so, our media team will send that to me and I will respond personally to the people that are emailing.
And that’s the component I think we need to keep working onto grow and formulate that a little bit more.
[0:26:36.2] JR: Yeah, figure out how to scale it, yeah.
[0:26:37.7] JS: Exactly but that has been a really neat way to see that personal interaction especially for the introverts that maybe aren’t going to have a question right in the moment to give them a chance to think it through and then come back with questions.
[0:26:48.5] JR: I love that so much. You guys have clearly thought about this a lot. I am sure aerated on this a lot. That is one of the best answers I’ve heard to this question thus far like how do you take something that is not overtly even Evangelical but use it to lead the conversation. One questions for you, are non-Christians come to these events? So, you got your core try, right? Are there non-Christian friends coming in? If they are, are they enjoying their experience or do they feel like it’s been a bait and switch?
[0:27:14.0] JS: Yeah, no. You know what? I think one of the best moments for that was actually a reviewer, a couple of reviewers that came just from Chicago land area. Yeah, the one that writes for See Chicago Dance and one that writes for dancermusic.com. And both of them was a resounding yes that they love the performance and the reason actually was the high level of excellence. And for them even though they may not see eye to eye on all of the nuances that I am putting in there as a choreographer they may not agree with my world view, the entertainment value frankly and the production level was so high, they could still enjoy it and it still cause them to think.
And it was funny because one of them I think grew up in the church and she put something like, “oh, it made me feel so warm and at home like a little girl in church again.” There was something about that drew her in. She couldn’t –
[0:28:00.4] JR: It’s truth, right?
[0:28:01.2] JS: Right, she couldn’t even fully articulate it but it was there. And so yeah that’s been really neat to see. We actually have people that are not of faith even on our donor section. So, we have donors that support our work just for the artistic value, which I think really speaks to the fact that we’re able to cross that bridge and that seeming barrier, which I don’t really think it’s real, but that barrier between secular and sacred and that is something that is really important to us.
[0:28:24.4] JR: That’s beautiful. So, for all you listening, you guys know Master of One is coming out in January 31st of 2020 and basically everything that Julianna just described as a huge part of the book. So chapter three of the book so the first part is, what is the purpose of mastery? Why as Christians should we have the highest standards of excellence in our work?
And I make the case that yes, excellence and mastery of a craft be in ballet or writing a book or starting a company does open up doors for you to have conversations of faith. But I actually don’t think that’s the primary purpose and the most fundamental purpose of mastery. The most fundamental purpose of mastery is loving your neighbor as yourself and creating something really excellent that serves them well and reveals the character of our excellent creator, God and Father, right? It is this fundamental ministry of excellence.
So yes, if our art, if our creating leads to those conversations, leads to cultural influence for the sake of the Gospel, great. But if not, we should still strive to create something that is just excellent and can be respected by reviewers, whether or not they’re people of faith or not, right? And in that way, even if there is not an explicit gospel presentation, we’re loving our neighbor as our self. You know, Jesus didn’t say, “love your neighbor as yourself so that you can tell them about me and pass out the track,” right? It was, “love your neighbor as yourself,” period, full stop.
So, I think that is really great. So, I want to go back to your story for a second because you talked about something that is really central to Master of One and I think it is something that a lot of us really wrestler with. You made this decision when you were nine or 10 to say, “this is my thing. This is the thing I am going to go really, really big on.” And Master of One is all about how do you find that thing, how do you make that choice and then once you’ve made it, how do you become a world class master of whatever that one thing is?
But I’ve got a lot of questions especially as I have been talking about the book with friends like, “what does that age in which you make that decision,” right? You made it super young, right? I think a lot of people make it later in life, do you have any regrets about when you were nine or 10 basically saying, “okay, this is it. I am going to spend the next however many years in my life committed to that thing.” Do you have any regrets about that?
[0:30:38.3] JS: Honestly the only regret that I have probably is that I didn’t go more into quicker.
[0:30:42.9] JR: You didn’t make as many tradeoffs as you wish you would have had?
[0:30:45.4] JS: Yeah and I think as many as I can could. But coming from a family that didn’t really understand the level that it would take I think had I understood even earlier and even younger what it would have taken, I think I would have possibly gone even farther into ballet and had been more intense in the training. And even though I am so happy with where I have ended up and I think God has been so good to me and I ended going to very beautiful place with the whole career that I’ve had. I am very happy with it; I mean I love it. I love that pursuit of excellence.
I hope that if my kids come to me and pick something that I know nothing about, we’ll pick hockey, Jeremy would love that and they say, “Mom, I want to play hockey. I want to go for it.” Like I hope that as a parent I am able to facilitate that.
[0:31:29.6] JR: So, I am actually going to this right now. Listeners, you guys are getting real insight into how insane I am. So, Ellison is four, almost five and I am already trying to figure out, “okay what is your thing?” She is a better swimmer than me like no joke and so Kara and I are talking about maybe taking her to the Olympics next summer so that she could be inspired by world class excellence, right? But I am also careful not to be too crazy.
So, it sounds like your parents had a good balance. So how did they encourage you in pursuing this thing? Were they always encouraging you and your six siblings to find one thing to really sink their teeth into? What did that look like in your house?
[0:32:12.2] JS: Yeah, for sure. So, my mom and dad had a little bit of different approaches to how they did it, but I think that actually ended up working out really, really well for all of us. My dad is very much the find what you’re good at and then do it and then really do it and he was hard core. You know I remember being a little kid and him, he knew nothing about ballet, but he knew how to be fit. And I remember him going, “I am going to the gym at 6 AM, you want to come?”
And I was this little kid and I didn’t know what I needed to do so I was like, “yeah, sure,” so I was running the track as this little kid because I didn’t know what I needed to do to be a ballerina at that point, but I did know that I needed to get fit and I remember trying to lift weights as a little kid. And them being like, “I’m sorry you can’t lift weights until you’re 16.” They’re kicking me out but I was trying. You know I was like whatever I could get my hands on I tried to do.
And then I remember him going, “hey, I think you should take private lessons.” There is a wonderful lady from New York City Ballet that actually moved back to the town I lived in, which was such a coincidence but a great thing. And so, she took me under her wing as a small child and gave me a lot more detailed instruction than what I could have probably gotten otherwise and I remember my dad making sacrifices and working later hours.
You know he was a college Prof; I remember him taking on extra class loads to give me those lessons. So he was very like, “okay, if you want to do this,” he would always tell me and he goes, “I am not Bill Gates but I am going to do what I can to get you where you need to go.” Whereas my mom I think on the flipside was she was very empowering in a sense that she wanted all of her kids to learn to be independent thinkers and to be creative thinkers and she was very focused on the education.
And to her, she didn’t care so much whether it was ballet or something else, she was bound and determine though to make me a creative and critical thinker. So, growing up, you know we took logic classes and we did this monstrous history course over the course of high school where I read a classic book, almost every two to three weeks. You had to read a classic book and write a report on it and now you being a book reader you know how much work that is as a kid.
But my mom was adamant and you were not getting out of it. She’s like, “I don’t care if you have to stay up until 4 AM you will read classic literature.” She was like, “because that is how you become a critical thinker that is how you understand the history of the world. That is how you understand how to think.” and so she was a lot more on that thread of you could do whatever you want. It can be ballet, it can be nursing, it can be anything, but you have to know how to think and you have to be able to stand on your own two feet intellectually no matter what you do.
[0:34:30.3] JR: That’s a pretty good balance, right?
[0:34:30.9] JS: It was.
[0:34:31.9] JR: Yeah, so by the way are you with This is Us fan, do you watch This is Us on NBC?
[0:34:35.3] JS: I do, I love This is Us.
[0:34:36.5] JR: So, are you caught up?
[0:34:37.7] JS: I am.
[0:34:38.4] JR: So, your story is Beth’s story.
[0:34:40.3] JS: Right.
[0:34:41.2] JR: Yeah, okay I’m like, “What in the world? I think I have seen this movie before. I have seen this movie before. You’re Beth Pearson.” It’s amazing. So, what is the one thing you guys really get right at Ballet 5:8? What do you think is the one thing that you guys have really mastered as an organization?
[0:34:56.9] JS: The biggest thing that we have mastered is we stayed true to our mission. Our mission it guides us, it is so important to us. There is probably not a day that goes by that I don’t articulate it in one way or the other. It’s very much a part of the fabric of who we are. All of our programming goes through that mission. It is all filtered through that. Whenever Amy or I or any of the senior staff are making decisions it is always with that background of, “okay, what is our mission, how do we further that goal and that mission?”
And I think that is really helped us to not get caught up in little random side projects, but to really stay focused. And after going into our eighth year and after not being around for that long. We have seen such wonderful growth and I think that is because we’ve been very focused and very singular in that mission and we've been able to build our organization quicker than if we had been sidetracked to a lot of different options. Because there is a lot of good out there. But we got to sacrifice the good and sometimes what people want from us in order to get to the best, which is the core of that mission.
[0:35:51.8] JR: Gosh, this is like the best endorsement for my book. You can imagine this is perfect. You’re quoting from the book. So, nobody builds something this successful over this length of time eight years without making really big mistakes. What is the biggest? What just pops into your mind right away that maybe you can help some of our listeners who are starting to create pursuits, entrepreneurial pursuits avoid?
[0:36:10.9] JS: Right, probably the biggest thing is lacking margin and having people, good people burn out. I think that that’s been the hardest thing. Because I am so singular and so focused, sometimes I have to remember that I can’t push everybody at that same speed.
[0:36:25.0] JR: So, is it a margin for yourself or the mistake is as the leader not helping your team create margin?
[0:36:31.4] JS: I think that’s been more of it. I mean I do think margin for myself is a good thing, but I am like a cactus. I can go for a while and I don’t need a lot of –
[0:36:41.4] JR: I have never heard that analogy before. That is a new one yeah.
[0:36:44.1] JS: I know right? And so that’s just how I am and eventually every six months or so I am like, “okay, I need to breath.” But I can go for quite a while without needing to take that break and that focus. Whereas that’s not I don’t think as typical especially for people that are coming on board. This isn’t something that is their heart and soul. It is not something that they may be thought of from the beginning and they get on board with it, absolutely and they begin to love it as their own.
But I think as a leader, sometimes my expectations for people’s ability to keep driving and driving and driving have to be tempered with that compassion for going, “okay, we do need to push forward, yes we do need to be excellent, but I also need to make sure that I give you time to rest and time to recover and recoup as best as I can.”
[0:37:25.2] JR: Yeah, you and I have very similar challenges as leaders. So, when I was running Threshold 360 day to day as CEO although I am no longer in it. I am chairman of the board now. But that was hard, right? Because I actually felt like I did a decent job of having margin in my own life and I expected that, “okay, so long as I am following those examples and leaving the office at a reasonable time, other people will create margin.”
I actually I don’t think that’s true. They didn’t really play out. I think you have got to be really intentional and explicit in verbalizing how you expect your team to have margin in their own life. So, one of our core values at Threshold was be exceptional at work and at home and that is a tension. I think that is an ongoing tension but that is a tension that we really valued enough to make it a part of our core value. So no, that is great advice. We’re sitting right here next to your husband who is a professional book marketer.
Jeremy is a marketing director here at Moody Publishing. We are actually sitting in the Moody’s offices right now. So, I am assuming you read a decent amount. Do you read non-fiction, fiction, what do you read?
[0:38:24.4] JS: Right now, because of my three kids and everything I have going on, it is mostly non-fiction. I’d love to get back to reading fiction when I have a little bit more time. But for now, a lot of what I read either helps me to be a better leader or a better ballet teacher or both.
[0:38:38.1] JR: What are some of the best things you’re reading? Not ballet specific that the whole audience may appreciate? What are some of the best leadership, business professional development books have you read?
[0:38:46.9] JS: So, one that is actually on my list is one that you just pointed me to. Can you remind me of the title, Jeremy, of the leadership book?
[0:38:52.9] JS: There is the one by Donald Miller, Building a StoryBrand, yep.
[0:38:55.9] JS: Yeah, that is one of the ones that we talked about a lot in terms of marketing and building, what Ballet 5:8 is and really getting that message out there. So, that is one that I am hoping to conquer this summer.
[0:39:06.0] JR: Ah spoiler alert, you are already doing it really well all right? So, you’re already following the StoryBrand framework pretty well, but it is a great resource. Any others?
[0:39:13.8] JS: Yeah, you know what actually this classic book, Winning Friends and Influencing People is one that I go back to periodically. Probably every three or four years because I feel like there is so much in that book that helps me as a leader to really think through how I’m approaching people because I am usually so focused on what I feel the end goal is. Sometimes it is easy for me to forget that you also have to be winsome and help people come alongside you in that you can’t just be this lone wolf that just goes on your own. You really have to learn as a leader of how to help people come alongside you.
[0:39:44.1] JR: That’s good advice. Carnegie’s is always good to pick up every few years and thank you for using the word winsome. I use the word winsome like five times in a chapter of my book and my editor came back and was like, “nobody knows this word. Nobody is ever used this word before.” I’m like, “I guess more people will know about winsome. It’s a word.” There’s not really a synonym for winsome. It is not like attractiveness.
So, on that random rant, we are going to wrap this thing up. So, Julianna, if our audience wants to learn more about you, your work, maybe they want to donate to Ballet 5:8, obviously they can Google Ballet 5:8, where is the best place to find more information? What’s the URL? Where could people go to support you and your work?
[0:40:20.4] JS: Yeah, definitely. Go to ballet58.org that is our website. You can find anything you need there. If you have more questions about the topics, feel free to email me. I’d be happy to talk with you.
[0:40:30.9] JR: Thank you so much for doing this. I really enjoyed this conversation. And best of luck as you guys continue to grow this thing.
[0:40:37.3] JS: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:40:40.4] JR: Man, I loved that conversation with Julianna. Thanks again to Julianna’s husband, Jeremy Slager for allowing us to record in Moody Radio’s incredible studios there in Chicago. Hey, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you subscribe to The Call to Mastery so you never miss an episode in the future, right? So, we’re going to start releasing this on a weekly basis, make sure you subscribe so you never miss a new piece of content.
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Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I’ll see you next time.
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