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Meet Hannah Barr | Professional Ballerina & Model
Hi Hannah, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?
The audition process to land a company position may have been the most intense in terms of building resilience, which is how I joined American Contemporary Ballet. I would audition for and travel to many ballet companies year after year, not knowing that a company maybe had just one female spot available, that they were switching directors, or that I’d simply be too tall (something of course I couldn’t change about myself). Resilience is knowing that even though obstacles are put in your way that you have no control over, you have to keep showing up and figure out how to climb over them. Resilience is being met with rejection after rejection, but continuing to pursue your dream no matter what. Because if you don’t, your soul will feel empty. You may not be able to control certain things, but you can control how you react to them. Resilience is both mental and physical; it definitely takes both a strong body and a strong mind to be a ballerina.
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We had the good fortune of connecting with Hannah Barr and we’ve shared our conversation below.
Hi Hannah, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking.
Taking risks has played an integral part in my career. Deciding to pursue professional ballet as a career itself is a big risk. One must decide on that pursuit at an incredibly young age compared to when others must decide to pursue most other careers, and the percentage of people that do become professional ballet dancers (and particularly for women because the competition is much more intense than for male ballet dancers!) is incredibly small. So much of it is out of one’s control as well, due to the subjectiveness of the artform. Also, the artform of ballet requires so much risk in itself. You have to take risks as a dancer, in the studio and onstage. The audience doesn’t want to see something boring or predictable. Taking risks and really going for something is what makes ballet interesting. You can’t hold back and expect to bring an audience to their feet.
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