The Ballet Code

Not gonna lie: I’m finding it difficult to turn the depth unfolding inside my private ballet mentorships into a post.

Because we are not simply “working on ballet.”

We’re looking at technique, learning, identity, nervous system, ambition & individual motivation, boundaries, adulthood—and the exact way all of these overlap in YOUR (ballet) life.

And every time I try to squeeze that into a neat little post?
Guess what? It feels insufficient!!! 😅 (Though my posts are pretty good, aren't they? lol)

Okay, here's the thing I DO want to bring you as close as possible to what happens inside these mentorship relationships—without compromising anyone’s privacy or turning something deeply human into “content.”

So, tell me:

What are you most curious to know about private ballet mentorship?

How the sessions work?

What we actually talk about?

The patterns I notice?

What changes when someone is mentored over time?

How technique fits into the deeper work?

How I know whether someone needs ten weeks or an entire year?

Ask me below. 😀 👇

I may turn your questions into my next posts?!
Would love to answer it for everyone!!

I’m quietly creating something preciously intimate behind the scenes

for October/November 2026 in the Netherlands…That’s all I’m saying for now. 😉

If you want the details,
leave a ‘DETAILS’ in the comments.

Why does dancing ballet from the inside out matter to you? 🩰

Let me know in the comments 👇🏼

Barely moving but sensing and feeling intensely.

How my chest widens with every breath.

How one tiny wiggle in my pelvis changes the way I lie on the ground.

How moving one part of my body changes another part that, at first, seemed completely unrelated.

I may genuinely have spent 1,000 hours on my bedroom floor.

Experimenting. Playing. Feeling.

Studying how every part of my body connects to another part.

How they relate. How they respond.

What changes when I stop trying to make something happen and begin listening instead.

I did this for ballet.

And I did it because I wanted to understand, in depth, what material my body is made of.

It probably makes sense to most of you that this kind of learning changed how I moved in ballet class.

But I want you to understand something else:

If you are genuinely serious about ballet-especially- as an adult. I would invite you to pour another 1,000 hours into understanding:

What way of explanations you understand the best.

What happens inside you when you’re making a mistake.

Can you allow vulnerability or do you immediately jump into
self-judgment?

Are you running after perfection or a deeper relationship with yourself and ballet?

Because your body is not simply the object performing the steps.
Your body is the material of your ballet life.

And your relationship with that material shapes everything:

Your technique.
Your learning.
Your artistry.
Your longevity.
Your capacity to remain devoted when progress is not linear.

Adult ballet is not about accumulating more hours in class.

It is about becoming deeply intelligent inside the hours you already have.

And this is what my 1,000 hours on the floor can now do for you:

I can see connections you may not yet know to look for.

I don’t expect you to spend 1,000 hours trying to understand every pattern alone.

My role as a private mentor is to bring sustained, experienced eyes to your dancing.

To remember what happened three months ago.
To notice what keeps returning.
To help you test what actually changes it.
To adjust when your body, training, or life changes.

And to give what we discover enough time to become an integrated part of your dancing.

Because a private session can create an insight.

But an entire year of private mentorship can hold the growth of a dancer.

I work privately at two different depths:

Ten weeks when one central pattern deserves concentrated attention.

Or an entire year when you want your body, technique, learning, nervous system, ambition, artistry, held inside one intelligent mentorship relationship.

You do not need to know which one you need before contacting me.

That discernment is already part of the work (my part)

If private mentorship pulls you,

pm me REAL TALK.

You’re serious about growing as a dancer.

So you keep looking for where that growth could happen:

A better studio.
A different teacher.
Another private lesson.
The next summer intensive.

Those choices can support you beautifully.

But if your growth always lives in the next ballet circumstance, you give away a lot of your power.

Because you cannot control the teacher’s focus, how many corrections you receive, or the ambition of the other adult dancers in the room.

At some point, you need to learn to lead your ballet from inside your own body:

🦄 To know what you want to get out of class and how to get it.

🦄 To refine not only the movements themselves, but how YOU work on them.

🦄 To strengthen your relationship with your ballet body with every plié.

One of my private mentees expressed the result beautifully:

“Since working with you, I’m much more grateful for what I can do. I’m more relaxed and that makes me a better dancer.”
This isn’t gratitude as a consolation prize.

It’s the kind of relaxation that makes your nervous system available for learning and allows you to dance with greater freedom, precision, and control.

Because you finally have the capacity for it instead of running on hysterical chicken energy. 🤪

The goal of private mentorship isn’t to make you independent of excellent teachers.

My dear, go get them!!!!

It’s to make your growth less dependent on perfect circumstances.

If you’re ready to stop compromising and start leading yourself from the inside out, private message me 'YEAR'.

And while I dove so damn deep into ballet technique, anatomy, and the science of learning — 15 years deep now — my natural talent always was understanding human behavior.

What's behind a yes, a no, a hesitant maybe? Most people never question their patterns. Their way of responding to life. Therefore they stay the same.

Now here's where it gets especially interesting.

Doing things differently is something I teach for ballet, too. The same thing that changed everything in my own dancing at 26, and the same thing I've watched change it for every single client since.

Say goodbye to "do it better." The moment you start looking for something new in your movement, you train your brain to stay curious. It allows moments of surprise, unexpected insights, and wonder.

And THIS is the recipe for reliable improvement. Not drill. Not willpower.

The ability to let life — and your ballet body — surprise you.

99% of adult dancers I've worked with over these 15 years — and there have been hundreds — do NOT trust their first impulse.

The signs their body sends them. While these signs are sharp, most brains try to dilute them.

This doesn't only matter for your choices in life — surprise, it's also a reason why the relationship you have with your ballet body isn't where it could be. Because most of the time, you downplay the signal she sends.

What this costs you, in real ballet terms: you dance (or run after) the steps, but you don't know how to be yourself on that dance floor. Connected to every millimeter of your movement AND self-expression.

If you've ever downplayed your own signal — type ME in the comments. I see you.

👀🖤

Not necessarily picturing yourself on a big stage.

Picturing yourself as the dancer you already feel like, somewhere underneath — and actually feeling it, not just seeing it.

Visualization only works when emotion is attached. A mental image alone does almost nothing. The sensation — the expansiveness, the excitement, the "sky is the limit" feeling — is what actually moves you, more than any to-do list ever will.

Same goes for technique. It's not separate from how present you are, how connected you feel to the music, how you're talking to your own body. Master the emotional and sensory layer first — the technical part falls into place far more often than you'd think.

This was part 3 of a 5-part series I taught live inside my Inner Circle — "5 Ways to Improve in Ballet Without Taking More Classes." If you want the kind of teaching that goes beyond a single post, that's exactly what lives in there:

real teachings, diary entries, and the unfiltered version of how I actually think about this work.

—

1 Ballet Real Talk spot still open this week — free, 20-minute conversations for dancers intrigued about working with me. No obligation.

DM me REAL TALK, or come find your people inside the THE BALLET CODE Inner Circle. 🩰

Listening to your body isn't something vague. It's not a feeling you stumble into once you finally relax enough.

It's a precise procedure.

It's a skill. I teach it the same way I'd teach any other technique — with attention, repetition, and feedback.

It's multilayered. For me, that includes physical feedback ("I feel tension in my glutes"), emotional feedback ("I feel vulnerable and exposed"), and mental feedback too ("I'm not 100% sure how to execute that step").

All three are information. Most people only ever learn to listen for one.

And even then — most don't actually listen. They judge the one piece of information they do receive from their ballet body.

Adult dancers patchwork their curriculum — an intensive here, an open class there, another unwanted change in teacher. And most of you already know this causes gaps.

What fewer people realize: taking "basics" classes doesn't automatically close them.

Many of you never got the chance to build ballet from scratch in the first place. So the gaps aren't just missing steps. They're missing foundation.

I'm not talking to the ones with an imperfect technique — that's everyone, always, there's always something to refine.

I'm talking to the ones with a wobbly one. The kind where you can't quite say what's missing. You just know something isn't landing, and you've stopped being able to tell why.

Here's what nobody tells you: a wobbly foundation isn't a technical problem you patch with more classes. It's a listening problem. Your body has been giving you feedback the whole time — you just haven't been fluent enough in it to catch what it's saying.

That's not something a single class fixes. It's not even something five days fixes. It's built — session by session, pattern by pattern, over time, with someone who who is able to mirror what's happening.

That's what private mentorship does. Not another correction. But building a trusting relationship with your adult ballet body and a foundation you can rely on.

If you want to start learning that language today,
The Ballet Code 5-Day Series is where that begins — leave a FIVE in the comments for a glimpse of the deeper work waiting on the other side of it.

If you're more an ALL-IN type for person and private mentorship is what you desire — let's talk. DM me BNU.