Trying Rusty Ballet: Jess Grippo

Jess Grippo is a force of nature: author, a TEDx speaker and founder of Dance Again, a New York City dance studio that offers a welcoming space for rusty dancers and newbies alike. One of her most popular offerings is Rusty Ballet where, she says, “creaky joints and cranky people are welcome.” We talk about how she came up with the idea of Rusty Ballet, why rekindling creativity saves us and the one thing we can all do now to start (or start again) dancing.

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Transcript:

Debra Hotaling (00:04):

Hello and welcome to the Dareful Project. I'm Debra Hotaling. Jess Grippo is a lot of things. She's an entrepreneur, a TEDx speaker, a dancer and founder of Dance Again, a New York City and online dance space that offers dance classes for rusty dancers and newbies. In fact, she offers classes called Rusty Ballet, where “creaky joints and cranky people are welcome.” Jess, welcome!

Jess Grippo (00:38):

Thank you so much, Debra. Thanks for having me on.

Debra (00:41):

So ground us on Dance Again. Where did that start?

Jess (00:47):

Sure. Well, it started with my own personal journey back into dance after having quit when I was about 19 years old. I was very serious about ballet when I was younger, but decided to go to regular college and study and do other things through my twenties. And I found myself in my late twenties with that inner dancer calling to me being like, don't forget about me. But yet I personally was way too intimidated to just step foot into a random dance class. I lived in New York City. A lot of the classes, even if they're labeled as a beginner class, they just seem fast and advanced and just, I was not in practice at the time. And so for me at the time, I just was like, well, I'm going to figure out my own way to do this. And it started out with dancing alone in my room a lot and kind of making quirky dance videos. This was way before TikTok existed, and I just started to find my own expression and my own movement through dance. And as time went on, I was like, all right, well, I think I've nailed the alone part of dancing, so let me see if other people want to join.

Jess (02:02):

And I started to kind of put word out there, and that was the origins of Dance Again. And the intention was that while it's really easy to find at least New York, LA, the major cities, you can probably find a professional-ish adult dance class in other places. Maybe you can't even find that. You can probably find a Zumba class or something, dance cardio based. But it seems like the cardio workout focused dance classes are the more accessible things. But I was really, I didn't want to just go in and work out and sweat. I wanted to feel like a dancer again. I wanted to learn choreography and express myself and all those things. And so that was really the intention of filling in that gap of let's create a class and a studio eventually that was that middle ground. That was something where could feel like a dancer again, have a class that wasn't so technical or fast paced that they felt like, ah, I don't know how to keep up, but also not just a cardio class. And that was the birth of Dance Again. And here we are many years later.

Debra (03:21):

Love that so much. You were speaking to me because I took dance, like parks and rec dance when I was little and just loved love, loved it. And then in college I took ballet and jazz, and I loved it. Super passionate, but not great. I was a grownup person, but it was still, you were learning choreography, you were learning the correct technique. And so one year my wonderful husband gave me ballet slippers. I'm like, I'm going to go back and take a ballet class. So I called this local ballet studio, and they're like, oh yes, did you ever take classes? You should come. Okay, Jess. I got there and everyone was in the biz and just keeping in shape before their next dance video. I was so out of everybody's league that I just was like that five-year-old kid just twirling around in the corner when everybody else was doing stuff. It was so awful that it was actually really fun and hilarious. But I wish I would've known you then.

Jess (04:30):

Yeah, I wish you did too. And so wait, did you ever go back or did you take that class and you were like, I don't know.

Debra (04:36):

No, that was it. That was it. So now I sort of satisfy myself with taking Zuma classes at the gym and stuff like that. So it feels like there's a big need. So tell me who shows up for your classes?

Jess (04:52):

We have a range of people I put on the website for rusty dancers and newbies who are maybe always had the dream to dance or lightly dance in the past, but are wanting to really start as an adult. And rusty dancers, meaning those who did dance actively, not necessarily professionally, but just took classes all through high school or maybe even into college. But then when adulting gets the best of us and we have a lot of other responsibilities and we kind of phase that part of our lives out. Yeah, and I mean it's a pretty wide age range. My oldest student is 72 years old. I think the youngest probably in their twenties. I think there's still even people in their twenties who are freshly out of college but are still missing it, are still craving that space that they can belong in a dance environment and not feel like an outsider.

Debra (05:57):

I want to talk about, you talk about your Aunt Maryanne and what you learned from her about creativity, which comes into what we're talking about here of even if you have an older body or you've been away from an art that it can always welcome you back. Can you talk a little bit more about creativity and what you learned from her?

Jess (06:23):

Yeah. Well, my great aunt Marianne, she was incredible. And she was a visual artist, a painter, which she only started in her forties in her life. The big takeaway that I learned from her was self-preservation. Life is tough. Let's face it. Art can be the thing that grounds you, that saves you, that keeps you connected to something rather than getting swept up and all the things that can happen. And she was an influence on me when I was a teenager, I started to get introduced to her and she was my grandfather's sister and my grandfather was an incredible man as well. He was, after he retired, he worked for Nabisco for a long time in their New Jersey Patterson factory.

Jess (07:34):

And he decided to take up a hobby of taking railroad spikes and turning them into these statues. And the artistic spark was there in our family, but it would come out later. And my aunt was, at this point, she was actively painting and making art. And I met her at a couple of times when she came down to New Jersey from Vermont, and we became pen pals throughout my high school experience and would write each other. And I still have these letters from her that were just as someone young who was pursuing a career in dance at the time. And it was really cool to hear from someone who was like, y