When Dancers Meet Cancer

An interview with Onco-Ballet founder Anna Wassman-Cox

Starting with the basics …

No end of the year round up for me! I did that already, sort of. But here at the close of 2023, I send you all my fervent wishes for peace, happiness, and health. It’s been a while since I’ve run an interview, and this one is long, but I’m happy to share it this morning. This one’s for the dancers, and the cancers.

Things are a little rough right now, I can’t lie. Last week I went back to the orthopedist expecting good news and found out that my dream of walking into 2024 on two feet was not to be. Not only is my fractured foot not healing as it should be, the fracture has actually gotten worse. I’m looking at another three weeks at least on crutches and who knows what after that. To be hobbled this long, just as I was starting to feel strong again, as I was vibrating to move, has been kind of devastating.

As I’ve written before, for me, returning to dance classes—and making peace with the young dancer I was thirty years ago—has been a powerful means of healing from the trauma of cancer treatment this year. It has felt urgent and has brought me a lot of joy, and to have this restorative practice cut off so abruptly has felt at times like the cruelest of cosmic jokes. But I was happy to discover a few weeks ago that at least I’m not alone in my fervor.

I learned of Anna Wassman-Cox and her fledgling Onco-Ballet Foundation through my friend and rowing teammate Leanna, who participated in a workshop Anna hosted at Rush Hospital here in Chicago this fall. Her mission: to offer free or low-cost ballet classes for cancer patients and survivors across the country. (The Onco-Ballet and more general ballet for wellness classes are all offered through her company Movement Pointe.) A former professional dancer, Anna had just returned to ballet after a multiyear hiatus when she was diagnosed with a recurrence of the breast cancer she’d been successfully treated for at 25. Dancing through her second round of treatment, and feeling the positive effect ballet was having on both her physical and mental health, she had a lightbulb moment—and I wanted to hear more about it. We talked on the phone in early December and I’m so pleased to share that conversation (edited, obvi) with you here now.

So, like I said, when I saw Leanna's posts about the workshop that you did at Rush, I just got so excited because I thought it sounded amazing. I was sad that I hadn't heard about it until after the fact, but I was just really taken by your whole project, and I would love to hear how it came about.

All of this started at Hoag Hospital here in Newport Beach. I reached out to someone who was leading my support group for young women with breast cancer and was like: I have this idea of sharing ballet for healing with people. And at the time, I didn't know what the name was yet or anything like that. And they said, “Why don't you plan to share it at our survivorship symposium?”

And that was the first class I taught. It was just like, OK, is this gonna be a thing or is it gonna flop? And let me tell you, it was a thing. So many people—like the entire group of like 50 people—were engaged. Everyone loved it, whether they were standing and doing it or sitting in a chair. And even if they got tired, they were still sitting and doing it from the sidelines. It was just amazing to see the joy that ballet brought people, and to see them have these ballerina moments where they were like, wow, I'm doing it.  I'm doing the thing that maybe was my childhood dream, or maybe was something I thought I could never do.

After that class I was like, OK, we're running with this and we're going to do more. I've officially trademarked the Onco-Ballet class and name, just because I think it's important that we make sure it's taught properly and people have the right training when they are going and teaching. Because being a survivor, there's things you want to hear in a class or maybe things that would resonate with you more. And then, especially from the ballet side [I want to] make sure that we're still teaching it in a ballet way, that it doesn't just turn into like another Bar Method or Pure Barre or whatever. It is a true ballet class, it's just done differently. It's not your traditional technique class, but it has elements of that.

My goal is just to help people heal through ballet. And that's something you don't hear a lot of, especially because of its culture of perfection. Ballet is very structured, and I think that's beautiful about it, but how do you use that structure to help people get back in touch with their bodies and express themselves through movement versus judging themselves and trying to be perfect? I prefer to teach without mirrors, so that you're really turning away from that self-judgment or external judgment, and really tuning into how your body feels while doing this movement. Maybe it feels different today because maybe that right side of your body is tighter because of radiation or surgery. Or maybe from chemo, your fingers and toes have really bad neuropathy, and you just want to focus on how to hold your hands or move your fingers and toes to help work through some of that.

The Onco-Ballet Foundation is our official nonprofit organization. We just got approved for 501 C-3 status. So we're a tax deductible organization now. I have a board of directors who have been in the ballet world, but then also on my board I have cancer survivors as well. The foundation supports offering Onco-Ballet basically free of charge to anyone who has faced cancer. And that's through our partnerships with hospitals, that's through donor funding, and other sponsorships that we get and hopefully grants eventually. A lot of it moved really fast. Like, all of this really unfolded and started with an idea over the summer or early last year, and I just started researching. And then by the fall it became official, and now we're trying to turn it into this really big, nationwide program.

I do think people really respond to movement and dance. When I got diagnosed, I got involved with rowing [through Recovery on Water], which I'd never done before in my life. But a friend of mine who had breast cancer was like, you should join my rowing team. So I did, and I love it. I've really enjoyed the community of it all. But going back to dance, it was just a whole different ballgame. For one, it's connecting me with a younger version of myself and a younger version of my body. But there's something about the power of expressive movement as opposed to just athleticism—not to knock athleticism—but the beauty and the art form of dance and of ballet in particular has just been profoundly healing.

I completely understand that. My brother did rowing all through high school and college, and so I did rowing for summer with him and I loved it. It was great to be outside and in the boat, and it's always beautiful scenery too. But you're right, it's just a different type of movement and workout altogether where with dance, there's just something to it where you're really tuning in and expressing your body. Not that rowing isn't full body, but it's a different type of full body, for those global big muscles, where ballet is both the global, big muscles and also those smaller, point-your-foot muscles.

You know, there's big programs like [Recovery on Water] and I know those are so popular, but in the cancer community, you really don't see too much dance and especially not ballet. Of course, [Onco Ballet] can always expand into other forms of dance, but ballet is what I know and what I've done my entire life. So I just was like, okay, let's start here and see where this goes and see how it develops.

Wassman-Cox, teaching.

So, good segue. So tell me about your past with ballet. Where did you dance? When were you dancing? When did you get diagnosed with cancer?

I started dancing like most kids, as soon as your parents can enroll you in the class. And funny enough, I didn't actually like it at first. My mom had to bribe me with cookies to go <laughs>. But I ended up really liking it, and I did ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop, even did gymnastics for a while, ice skating, you name it. And then by the time I was nine or 10, that was when dance teachers were like, oh, you really seem to have a natural gift for ballet.

At the age of, I think I was 12, I was awarded a full scholarship to the summer program at San Francisco Ballet School. That was the moment where I was like, oh, OK. We're serious. We're really going to do this. And I spent the whole summer at San Francisco Ballet and had an amazing time and got really good training. Over the next couple years, my mom really was supportive and pushed me to be serious in what I was doing. And by the age of 15 or 16, I was invited to go to the year-round school at San Francisco Ballet [where I went for a year]. Then, around 18 or 19, I decided that it was time to pursue the company route instead of going to college. I ended up getting into the Joffrey Ballet [in Chicago] for their training program, so I joined and I was part of that for a while. And then just due to injuries, I was like, you know what? I went for it but I think I'm done, I've had a lot of injuries and just mentally, physically, emotionally, I was really burnt out from being so young, moving away from home so early, and just giving my whole life to ballet for so long.

I decided to just stop my professional career and kind of just walked away. I taught for a while, and did some more contemporary things, but I was at the point where I just needed a break. So I went back to school, to Loyola for business school, and I was 25 and just about to graduate [when] I was diagnosed with breast cancer for the first time. Like two, three months before graduation, which is crazy.

I had a full bilateral mastectomy, just because I was like, I just want this out. I don't want to deal with this anymore. And so that kind of was the big surgery that kicked off everything. I ended up graduating top of my class with high honors, summa cum laude, while dealing with breast cancer.

That's amazing.

Thank you. I did six rounds of TCHP and then no radiation the first time around, and was like, OK, I'm done. And I started my corporate job [at Bosch]. They had this great marketing leadership program that I was part of for the first two years I was at the company. So I did that, I got to move to Germany, and had some really cool experiences there. And then I moved to California and I've been part of their e-bike division doing business development and market research, and was just kind of living my life. I got married, did all this stuff, and then I started feeling that I missed ballet. So I started taking class and then shortly after that I was re-diagnosed with my local recurrence. Luckily it was only a local recurrence—I was 29 and we found it early and I was able to do really targeted chemo.

I'm finishing that now. I'm on Kadcyla, which is every three weeks. So it's been the longest active treatment of my life. But it's been a lot easier on my body because it is so targeted. I haven't lost my hair. I don't have quite as much fatigue. Overall the side effects have been OK, but mentally I struggled. It was really hard the first year. I really didn't tell anyone about my diagnosis 'cause I didn't really know how to talk about it.

So I sat with it for a while and really just focused on my mental health and healing. And I took some time off work because I was like, I need a break. And during that time, I just started dancing a lot and I started taking ballet class like almost every day, or at least a couple times a week. And I really saw that that was what was helping me heal. Through surgery, through radiation, this time through chemo, I've danced basically the whole time. Some days were easier than others. And of course I'm not as active near the end of treatment 'cause I get more tired and my endurance isn't as high, but whether I'm sitting in a chair and just doing that, or doing light stretching like I did this morning, I feel like it's just such a modifiable dance form—you can still do the general technique of it, but modify it to your needs.

Just this past fall I decided to make the non-profit official to help provide these classes for free. And hopefully we'll be getting into body positive leotards and activewear, and things like that, just to really show that ballet can be for everybody. For so long it's only been for a select few but I think anyone can do it.

I think it's definitely changed a lot since 30 years ago when I was dancing. Even the class that I've been going to here is wonderfully diverse just in terms of age range and body type. Everybody's at a certain level of experience, but there's a bunch of teenagers in it, and then there are people who are older than me, and people who clearly have professional backgrounds who are still dancing. And then there's some people who are in their fifties or sixties who don't have a professional background necessarily, but they're there. I think that's been one of the things that's really made it more welcoming for me to go back to ballet. Because like every former ballet dancer, I have all the baggage, right?

Like, same <laughs>. And that's what I've been working through this whole time. It's how do you create an environment in a class that, like, as you get older, you're like, I don't want to be nitpicked and corrected with every little thing anymore. I just want to dance and enjoy myself and sure. If I'm doing something wrong, you know, give me pointers. But I don't t want you to tell me that I need to cross my fifth more, because my hips and knees will not allow that anymore!

Right. You know, do tell me to plié because otherwise I'll hurt myself but otherwise ... no. So can you break down a little how an Onco-Ballet class differs from a traditional technique class?

I'll give an example of a workshop class that I host because it's for all levels, all people, no experience necessary -- just making ballet approachable for people and starting simple, like, OK, how do you point your feet? How do you hold your hands? What is a port de bras? And just breaking things down into everyday language versus ballet terms. I mean, I love a good technique class, don't get me wrong, but I give people more moments of stretching to help them warm up first before you even do pliés. And then like, some of the classes I've been teaching have been at hospitals and conference rooms, where there's no barre, right? So, how do you do pliés in that situation? Maybe you're not doing grands pliés because that's a lot of balance and all that. Or you have people that are much older that have mobility limitations. So how do you help them if they're sitting in a chair? If someone had surgery and can't lift their arms above their head, how do you help them just move their hands while they're moving their legs, because that's what they can move at the time?

I do pliés and tendus. I'll do like some bourrées and a little soutenu turn, just so people have that ballerina moment where they feel like, oh, I'm learning what you see people do on stage. And then in the workshop-specific classes, I actually do a combination. So I'll teach them little elements. Like, for example, I've been doing a Swan Lake-themed class, where we learn swan arms and we learn Little Swans, 'cause, like, you can do easy coupés, you can do some échappés, and balancés — just things where if they were to ever watch Little Swans on YouTube, they'd be like, "Oh, that's not far off from what I did!"

I try to make the Onco-Ballet class just really modifiable, really bringing in those elements of how do you meet your body where it is today, and listen to it and feel the differences. Maybe you had surgery on one side, or maybe you had surgery on both sides; how are you really tuning in? It’s not as much about the perfect technique. Of course I'm teaching them ballet technique, but it's more about how are they feeling during the class? And how do you relate that to some of those range of motion issues that they've had? Or helping them find their balance again after not moving for a while. Or just feeling some of those muscles that they haven't ever used in their entire lives.

And how do you build people up so they would know if they just went to a dance studio, what a general technique class is? Ballet has always seemed so gatekept. So how do we break down that and make it inclusive and welcoming? In my research, I went to a few beginning ballet classes and some even like beginning-beginning, like pre-ballet, and you have to meet people where they are. As adults, when you try something new, you don't want to feel like you don't know what you're doing in the back of the class. You want to feel like, "Oh, OK, this is broken down enough, but I'm still doing it and trying it and challenged just enough." And then of course as this grows and develops, and as people are trained more, there can be more elements of a full ballet class. But as we're just getting started, most people have never taken a ballet class. So it's about how do you break this down even more to get more people involved?

That was going to be my next question. So, most of the people who come have no dance background at all?

Most people don't, and that's why as I start this and roll this out at hospitals, the goal would be, at the hospital level, this is really probably just that workshop-style class, and maybe a six-week series. But hopefully eventually this could be in a dance studio or in a space where then there's specific classes that are like intermediate or advanced.

It would be amazing if you could partner with the studio. And have these ballet for cancer survivors and cancer patients be part of the class offerings.

That would be the goal. I'm trying it on a local level right now. Still TBD, in the works, but with some of these more advanced classes I think you can really dive into technique and what you're doing in dancing, but more visualization, more breathing, more like, they're not just focused on, oh my gosh, I have to learn something new, but taking that to the next level and using that ballet class for how do you use this movement to heal? How do you use it to move through some of that pain you've been holding onto in your body. Advanced classes, maybe you're learning specific variations. It's a work in progress, honestly, with some of the higher-level ones. But I figure meet people where they are now and get it started, and then the advanced classes, that's where it gets fun dancing and really moving.

This all sounds so great. It really does.

Thank you so much. Most people from the dance world do get it, but you know, there's always a few that you're like, oh, okay. This, I guess just isn't for you.

No, I think it's fantastic and obvious, like I said it just tracks so closely with my own experience over the last year. The one thing that is interesting is that like, I didn't, you know, walk into a class last spring saying, "Hey, I had cancer and I'm coming back to ballet." No one in the class knows that I had cancer. I'm just a dancer with really short hair. And it is nice to be in that space and not have it be a cancer-specific space.

I agree. There is something to be said about having an environment to just dance and it not be a cancer-specific space. Because I know sometimes that is actually overwhelming and you have to be in the right head space a little bit. But what I do love about Onco-Ballet is you don't always have to talk about it.

Yup!

I was sitting in my young women with breast cancer group and I just remember feeling my whole body being clenched and sitting on the edge of my seat, like, I don't really wanna talk about this right now, but I'm here so I feel like I should share and I feel like I should talk. And of course you always have good conversations with people after, but just that feeling of my body holding onto things versus moving and letting go. And that's why I wanted to create this as [a way to] move in community with people that get it. Maybe you don't have to talk about it, or maybe you want to, and you have that option that you could share that if you do, or just share how you're feeling that day, or not share anything at all, but you could just move through it.

Yeah. It's the same in rowing. Like, you're not talking in the boat. You're not talking in ballet. You're not supposed to be talking in ballet class! Right?

Exactly. You can shut your mind off and just be.