Bonus Episode: Don’t Box Yourself In: Two Former Dancers on Their Transition to New Lives with Roland Spier and Jaya Puglise

After a childhood and youth spent rigorously training for professional careers in ballet, Roland Spier and Jaya Puglise each suffered career-ending injuries. With their hopes for careers in dance at an end, both were faced with finding new purpose and identities. They each attended Columbia University in New York. Both in their 20’s, Roland and Jaya work as management consultants now but are giving back to dance and dancers through Second Act, which Jaya describes as ”a network to connect current and former dancers of all backgrounds to streamline the difficult transition and creates a support system for personal and professional growth.” Says Roland, “Second Act was born from my experience struggling to find a path after hanging up my dance shoes due to injury. I want to create a resource for dancers experiencing a similar transition to find support, both personal and professional. I am passionate about this opportunity to bring dancers together, while giving back to the arts.”

Topics Include:

The close identity young dancers develop to the profession, because they start so young, often at three

or four, and then spend time at the dance studio rather than in after school activities.

The strong bonds young dancers form with their classmates as they work towards performances and

reaching milestones in the craft, which are hard to reproduce outside of the dance world.

Feeling gratitude for the skills gained through the years of study and practice, but sadness too for the

dance career that didn’t happen.

Empathizing with young Olympic athletes and the pressure they feel to perform and what happens

when they can’t “deliver".

The difficult transition out of the dance world to finding new interests and pursuits.

Founding the nonprofit mentoring group Second Act, bring together mentors with younger dancers

transitioning to other careers.

Adjusting to enjoying ballet as audience members.

Their advice to others: Don’t box yourself in, there is a lot that’s open to you.

Resources:

Instagram: @secondactnyc

Roland Spier is originally from Washington D.C and trained at the Washington School of Ballet, dancing alongside the company in many of their productions. After graduating high school he was invited to be a trainee in Pacific Northwest ballet’s Professional Division where he performed with PNB also freelancing as a guest artist with smaller companies and studios. He took two gap years, prior to starting at Columbia University from which he graduated in 2020 with a major in architecture and a concentration in East Asian studies. Currently an Associate Consultant at OC&C, Roland focuses on corporate strategy and M&A due diligence across sectors.

Jaya Puglise grew up in Vermont, training at Vermont Ballet Theater. After attending summers at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy summer intensive, she was awarded a full scholarship to train at the school in Moscow for a summer while taking Russian language classes, and later invited to stay to train year round. After a severe foot injury led her to stop ballet, Jaya studied abroad in Russia for her final year of high school.

Jaya graduated from Columbia University in 2020 with a double major in political science and Russian language and culture. She received departmental honors for her thesis “Creating Memory and Commemorating the Wronged: Alexei Ratmansky’s The Bolt and The Bright Stream”. Now working at OC&C Strategy Consultants as an Associate Consultant, Jaya works across a variety of industries in corporate strategy and due diligence projects.