Dancer focuses on fitness

Troy Monger-Levin glides through the air. Photos submitted

By Tom Victoria

Troy Monger-Levin excels at every endeavor from artistry to fitness. Along with sculpting bodies, he creates art on the stage.

The California personal trainer is a ballet dancer.

Troy, 20, explained why dance is important to him.

“It’s a little hard to put into words because of how it feels when I dance,” he said. “To highlight one of my favorite aspects, though, is the orchestra. Thinking about no matter what we think, who we vote for, color, race, religion and creed — none of that matters for the two hours a show is on or for the countless hours of rehearsal.”

Troy said ballet is art that connects people.

“It’s magical because for a moment in time everyone is in the same place in the score,” he said. “The music unites all of us that have worked a lifetime to be where we are now.” 

Troy prefers the classics to more contemporary fare.

“That goes back to music being my first love,” he said. “Dancing isn't really anything without music. No one wants to watch six minutes of silence. I grew up listening to Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich, those romantic Russian composers, they're definitely anchored in my childhood. Tchaikovsky composed the big three ballets that everyone knows, Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. That music is just iconic.”

However, Troy finds merit in modern pieces as well.

“I would always rather do a classic,” he said. “But contemporary work, I'm finding joy in it, for sure. There's a lot to take joy when it coms to new creation and the minds of today paying homage to the classics. We wouldn't be here without the classics. You can find that in every work.”

Before an injury sidelined Troy, he was working in Missouri.

“Two years into my training, I moved out to Kansas City for their school,” he said. “I initially just auditioned for the school, so I spent a year there. After that, I had been promoted into the trainee program, which is basically an unpaid internship. Last year, I got promoted into the second company for my first paid gig.”

Troy explained why ballet dancers often are performing one show while rehearsing another.

“There's a lot of copyright laws surrounding dances and even without them, we want to make sure we set them right,” he said. “Oftentimes, companies will hire official repetiteurs or setters for that specific ballet. There's been times we've been rehearsing for a ballet we won't perform for six months. Whenever they have an available week, they come and rehearse us. We learn it, and then we don't see that piece for a while, and then we have to just remember it like that.”

Troy added one of the most famous ballets requires extra preparation.

“The girls start learning our Snow and Flowers for The Nutcracker at the beginning of the year while we're rehearsing for our first program,” he said. “Most people don't understand that being a ballet dancer is a real job. We fill those nine hours that we're in the studio. We fill it to the brim every day.”

Troy said music plays a key role in helping him perform the right moves during a show.

“The biggest thing is the music,” he said. “Each production's music is very different. Music is one of the most stimulating mediums for our brains. As soon as something turns on, we want to move how we know to move to that music. There's been times someone will bring up a video and be watching something, and I'll hear the music from three years ago. My body will start doing it. I haven't rehearsed that for three years, but somehow it still knows it.”

However, Troy said not every dancer is the same.

“We have so many parts of our brain moving while we're learning this choreography that it gets pretty ingrained,” he said. “Every dancer is different. There are some that once they finish performing something, they forget it. You could play the music, they're like, oh, yeah, we performed that, but I couldn't tell you what step we did in it. For me, the main thing is just as soon as the music turns on, I can switch between those.”

Troy said learning the craft entails being able to deal with unexpected occurrences during a live performance such as a performer’s error or a problem with a costume.

“There's those moments where it really tests your instinct,” he said. “It's a combination of natural ability and how long you've been on the stage. Dancers’ lifts have failed on stage, and they didn't really have a plan B. They just improv something with their partners. This onstage communication that we all have with eye contact and sometimes even just talking on stage with the music going, it is pretty amazing what can be accomplished in the heat of the moment.”

Troy said mistakes are common, just not readily visible to the audience.

“I feel like every program we have, something goes wrong,” he said. “There are multiple times during pas de deux I've had that you're close enough with that woman that you can talk to her on stage while you're behind her, because no one's looking at you. I've had lifts not go right. I've had turns go horribly, and all you can do is sit there and smile. Sometimes, a turn goes horribly, and we have four more counts because she was supposed to be turning during that time. I just look at her, and we just smile for four counts. You just go with it.”

Troy said costumes and sets always have potential issues.

“No matter how many millions of dollars are in a performance, costumes and sets are less formidable than they seem,” he said. “They can be so flimsy. It may not matter how good the costume people are. It may not matter how good the set construction team is.”

Troy recalled a performance when a wardrobe malfunction occurred.

“We were dancing a classic,” he said. “The principal woman was doing her fouettes and here we see the back of her tutu is open. She can't do anything. In some cases with principal couples, the man will come out during a coda, and he'll be doing turns or something. And then they'll switch two times, and they come together at the end. She just finished her fouettes early and ran off. There were four counts of just empty space on stage, and the guy came out and just did his thing.”

Troy, who is 6 feet and 3 inches tall, explained another cause of costume issues.

“We're getting costumes that we might not have time to be altered to us,” he said. “There'll be massive camel toe or moose knuckle going on, and there's nothing we can do. We just have to smile. Dancers have some tricks to move things around. The main problem I've had is because I'm so tall. I've had tights that are way too small for me. You move the scene wherever you can, and you keep doing that on stage. Maybe you have a second to go offstage and you fix it.”

Troy pointed out the complexity of ballet sets it apart

“You won't see that in a dancing competition,” he said. “But also watching something like Black Swan with Natalie Portman. I'm watching this now because I had watched it as a kid before I started dancing. Natalie Portman is an amazing actress, but seven months of work is nothing compared to 17 years of work. Most dancers, especially women, by the time they sign their first contract and are officially a professional dancer, they are more educated in their craft than a doctor right out of grad school.”

Troy said there’s no way to simulate actual ballet.

“Seeing Natalie Portman, her port de bras, the carriage of the arms, how her arms move,” he said. “It's that unrefined movement. There's no way you can fake it. There will always be a market for ballet dancers to work just because of how precious it is because of our putting so much time into it.”

Troy stressed ballet is performed across the globe.

“There are companies scattered everywhere,” he said. “I think every country has a ballet company, even countries like Kazakhstan. A mentor of mine danced with the National Ballet of Kazakhstan. It's just amazing that it exceeds political expectations. No matter what, it will be around.”

Troy always was interested in the arts.

“I've always been exposed to art,” he said. “My mom always loved reading and art is everywhere growing up. She has busts and books everywhere. I started studying music as a kid, and I taught myself piano. That's the best instrument to learn first, because everything's visually in front of you. All of Western music theory is right there. That became a pretty big part of my life, and I thought that's what I wanted to do with it.”

Troy was drawn to dance.

“I met this dancer, who came in to do a little tap number,” he said. “I was like, oh, that's super cool. I had grown up watching Fred and Ginger, so I was like, that's great, I want to do that. I went and tried it, and it wasn't for me. She was at one of those comp studios like Dance Moms, where they're super jazz dancers. They just do all this crazy stuff. I was 15, and I was like, that's not what I want to do.”

But Troy soon found his calling.

“Luckily, my first teacher, Gina Illingworth, she was a principal dancer at the National Ballet of Norway,” he said. “She had a legitimate career. She was like, if you want to do classical ballet, I would study with me. I was like, great, let's do that.”

Troy’s favor of traditional art was solidified.

“I've always just appreciated the older things,” he said. “The more refined version of the art instead of what we see a lot of today is that showboaty, very loud, very bastardized version of the art. Sort of the little nuances that make it really classically divine.”

Troy’s dance career was interrupted by injury.

“I was coming down from a double cabriole,” he said. “So you jump up and then while in the air, you beat your legs twice together, and then you come down on one leg. I came down wrong and my knee popped in and out, and there it was. The injury happened. I don't know if you've heard of Jacob's Pillow, but I was out there. I was so excited to perform on that legendary stage.”

Troy’s recovery is moving along.

“At this point, I'm walking around without crutches and a brace, so normal life is almost back,” he said. “I did have to move back home to California for this because of the injury. I was dancing professionally in Kansas City and obviously that can't happen right now.”

Troy isn’t sitting idle in the interim.

“I moved back home,” he said. “Had to pivot. I started taking college classes online at Liberty University and I started working at this elementary school as a special ed aide. Just anything I can do that's not as physical and personally training online. I’m trying to just adjust as much as I can for this year. I know it's temporary. This is an injury that people come back from.”

Troy pointed out athletes compete at the highest stage after sustaining the same injury.

“If you watched the Olympics, that girl (Rebeca Andrade of Brazil) who beat out Simone Biles in the floor routine, she had her ACL reconstructed three times,” he said. “I don't know how she does it, but it is something that you can bounce back from and come back even stronger, so I'm hopeful. It's just this one tough period in my life.”

Troy expects to be able to dance in the spring with ballet to follow a few months afterward.

“Nine-month mark is when I'll be back at it,” he said. “I guess that would be around May. And then the 12-month mark is when I'll be fully back to classical ballet. Classical ballet is the hardest on your body. I'm going to try to get a summer gig that I had last year before the injury. And that's more contemporary dance, so it's less on the knees. They recommend 12 months just because it decreases your chance of tearing it again by 2 percent, which is not much, but it is something.”

Troy said it’s not uncommon for dancers to incur fluke injuries.

“There's stories of dancers, walking to rehearsal or walking to the theater, and they just step off the curb and they tear something,” he said. “That stuff happens all the time.”

Troy has never witnessed a dancer fall off the stage, but said it occurs.

“I've never seen it,” he said. “I've heard stories. There was a dancer at Kansas City Ballet. He used to dance with the National Ballet of Cuba. He said during a difficult variation he had, it was his first time on stage doing it. He just got a little bit too close to the edge there and he was hanging on. It was super dramatic. And then he would look down, and it was only a couple of feet into the pit.”

Troy confirmed it’s less likely for ballet dancers to fall off a stage than other performers.

“A lot of what we do in rehearsal is just the proper marking of where we need to be: downstage, upstage, stage left, stage right,” he said. “Proper placing of where we are so we're not interfering with other dancers or making sure that we have enough room for the next set of steps we're going to do. A lot of what you'll see if you'll watch a variation, which is when a solo dancer is on stage. But a lot of what you'll watch is that they're very particular where they go to make sure they have enough room to travel the next set of steps.”

Troy said music is vital in helping dancers know where they should be on stage.

“In classical ballet, they'll finish a set of steps and then they'll pose,” he said. “And then they'll just walk to the back and start a new diagonal. There's music set in there so that we can place ourselves properly, so we're very aware of the space that we have.”

Troy said performing in smaller venues also helps acclimate dancers to where they are on stage at any given time.

“I spent the last two years in the second company at the Kansas City Ballet,” he said. “We go to schools. We do it on a gym floor. We go to assisted-living homes. We perform on all these spaces that are not stages. We're getting very used to having to perform on super small, super oblong or oddly shaped spaces. So we're pretty groomed from the young stages of our profession until we retire to be able to read a space and see what we can do with it.”

“Every time there's a live audience, you turn up the volume a little bit naturally. That's what every dancer does without even knowing it.”

Troy dances with the Kansas City Ballet.

Troy’s dancing led to improving his fitness even further.

“I started this fitness journey to support my dancing,” he said. “Getting into it, I had a lot of physical attributes that helped me with dance, but then at the same time, I have very weak and inflexible ankles, so I had to really work with them. From there, I also realized that I had to be much more physically capable in this profession, especially starting at 15, I had basically three years to get into it, so I was doing everything I could to really help my chances there.”

Troy said being fitter and stronger especially aids men in ballet.

“For a male ballet dancer, partnering is probably half of your job,” he said. “Being able to make the girl in front of you look good, and that's your only job when partnering. That has been one of my biggest attributes that has helped me with even getting a job with Kansas City Ballet in the first place is being able to partner well.”

Troy said enhanced fitness carries other benefits with it as well.

“The physical aspect of it definitely helped in the monetary aspect,” he said. “The personal training job was helping my small dancer salary. And at the same time, I do love how busy it was. There were days that I would wake up at 4:30, and then I would have a client at 5, then I'd work out for myself. And then I'd go to the studio, and that's 9 to 6. Then I would teach the girls in the academy that attached to Kansas City Ballet. I remember feeling so physically exhausted that it felt good walking home, always feeling so satisfied.”

Troy has an athletic background.

“From a very young age, I did like cross-country,” he said. “That was the only sport I was good at. I did not do well in any of the other sports, but I was a pretty good runner. I've always enjoyed that.”

Troy then focused on fitness at 18.

“I got a job at Planet Fitness and was a towel boy for a whole year,” he said. “I was working for my personal trainer certificate because they give you a pretty significant discount on that education at Planet Fitness. As soon as I had that, it was sayonara. I joined a health club downtown, closer to the studio and was a personal trainer there.”

Troy was hooked.

“That changed everything for me,” he said. “The education I received from that certification and the overall awareness I have of my body helped that along, and I just realized I wanted to dive into it. Dance can be a very self-fulfilling career, but it doesn't give back as much as I'd like it to. Of course, that's the very nature of the arts, but it also depends on how you treat your art.”

Troy didn’t want to be like some male and female divas.

“There are dancers that the whole world revolves around them, and the egos are huge,” he said. “And then there's dancers that are much more generous and are there for the audience. That's where I try to let my art come from.”

Troy savors the dichotomy of two careers.

“I loved going to the gym and being able to forget about dance, because it can be all-consuming and be able to help someone right in front of me achieve their goals,” he said. “In this country, chronic pain is way too common. I've had so many clients that complain about a lot of chronic pain or illness that they experience.”

Troy was enlightened by research done with older people.

“They were doing a study on 60-year-olds and above, and they had asked them about their previous fitness,” he said. “The healthier of those people all had the same common tie: they had a high count of muscle mass in their body, lean muscle mass. It was interesting because they were actually healthier in the long run than marathon runners. So it doesn't all have to do with cardiovascular activity. It really also has to do with lean muscle mass and that percentage that it makes up in your body.”

Troy was galvanized.

“That really got me going with all my clients with power training, strength training and hypertrophy training,” he said. “I was addicted to this. They would come back to me each week and they'd be like, I feel great. I don't have this pain anymore. I'd see the improvement. That made me really feel like it was worthwhile. As much as I do love the art and I do love the physical aspect for myself, I think it really comes from a place of I really enjoying helping people. It makes me feel better about choosing dance as a profession rather than something much more beneficial to other people.”

Troy, who recently narrowed his training focus to helping dancers gain lean muscle while staying agile and graceful, wants to be one of the healthier people as he ages.

“A big thing for me is I want to be able to get on the floor with grandkids and kids past a certain age and play with them and still be able to go on hikes when I'm however old,” he said. “The world is so big, you can't see everything before you're 30.”

Troy weighs what activities he should do while recovering from surgery.

“I love hiking and walking and all that, but at the same, I've been trying to be very careful and toe that line of safety and increasing my risk factor, of screwing up this very expensive knee surgery,” he said. “I can't risk this injury twice.”

Prior to the injury, Troy still reigned in his activity.

“During shows, I would be careful about how much I exhausted myself,” he said. “Every time there's a live audience, you turn up the volume a little bit naturally. That's what every dancer does without even knowing it. Because it's a show, there's an increased risk of injury.”

Troy said dancers even must adjust to using a different floor.

“We have a different floor we're dealing with during a show week,” he said. “We rehearse all year in our studios, and then we have one week before the show with the new floor. We're jumping higher than we usually are, so there's a little bit of an adjustment there.”

Although Troy doesn’t take unneccesary risks, he doesn’t cease every physical activity.

“I picked up roller skating last year as a hobby, and I had never done it before,” he said. “I definitely recognized the risk involved, but at the same time, I knew that you have to live. I was raised Christian. I'm definitely still intact with that relationship with God, and I definitely recognize Jesus as my savior, but I don't go to church. I'm not gonna live in fear of anything. He wouldn't have brought me this far in the dance company if I wasn't going to make it.”

Troy appreciates how being extremely fit helps in daily life, including dealing with the aftermath of the injury.

“Every day, I'm grateful,” he said. “Getting on pants, putting on shoes, putting on socks, I couldn't bend the knee. I had to put my leg up here and then stretch the sock over. Without that flexibility, I wouldn't have been able to do this. The other thing was my other leg taking all this weight. It was no problem for me balancing on one leg to brush my teeth or wash dishes. Driving came super easy. Getting in and out of the car with one leg, getting up, sitting down with one leg.”

Troy cited an exercise that was particularly beneficial.

“Being able to pistol squat unlocks so much for me as far as mobility,” he said. “Up and down. Every day, I'm just more and more grateful that I've been this mobile. I don't think I would have been mentally prepared if I hadn't been.”

Troy also teaches ballet to elementary school students.

“That was one thing I've always wanted to do,” he said. “The main thing that I offer for students is that I started ballet not that long ago. I understand what it feels like to be just starting and as a very tall, very skinny, weird 15-year-old, so I had a lot of challenges that came my way.”

Troy focuses on the details.

“As a teacher, I offered a very specific approach to teaching ballet, where I am very particular for lack of a better term, very anal about that,” he said. “Straight legs all the time, pointed feet all the time, because I have to think about that constantly in my own dancing.”

Troy enjoys helping keep ballet alive through teaching.

“Raising the next generation of dancers is just as important as enjoying your career now,” he said. “Ballet is probably one of the oldest, still living oral traditions out there. There's very few textbooks written on ballet, and when they are, you can't really learn it from there. It has to be something you learn from a master of their craft, which is something that's very, very useful.”

Troy started taking online courses while recuperating.

“I've had a calling back to what I wanted to do as a kid,” he said. “I'm studying a little bit of music composition and commercial music. That's my minor, and then my major is in business. It's a very applicable degree I could put anywhere. Most dancers retire around 40 or before, so it's not a very long career. I do want to set myself up for more than just teaching ballet afterwards.”

Troy also would like to take on another role in dance.

“It's a pipe dream, so I'm hesitant to say much about it,” he said. “I would like to compose for dance during my career and maybe choreograph all in the same basket for a while and see where that takes me while I'm dancing. But if nothing else, I'll have the business degree.”

Troy stays motivated by keeping in mind how others succeeded or failed throughout life.

“My family dynamic was a big factor,” he said. “I look back realizing that we were always stuggling. My parents, siblings and I were constantly fighting mental health chllenges as a result of our situation.”

Troy watched his parents struggle.

“My parents got divorced very early in my life, so it's been a pretty normal thing for me,” he said. “My mom worked all these odd jobs trying to raise us, but at the same time, my dad was working just to pay child support. That's not what life should be about. This is something that I'm very passionate about: breaking the cycle. My parents came from very dysfunctional households.”

Troy credited his parents for their work ethic and overcoming challenges.

“My mom, she's already done a lot of work to break the cycle for us,” he said. “I definitely want to make those sacrifices worth something. I've always wanted to stay busy. I don't like downtime very much, so just the way I'm wired is a big part of it as well, but also honoring the sacrifices my parents have made for me and for us. I'm not one for mediocrity. If anything, there's that old saying if anything is worth doing, it's worth doing right.”

Troy dispensed advice to ballet dancers aspiring to be professionals.

“One of the biggest things for my success has a lot to do with how I am to work with,” he said. “There's a lot of big egos in dance. But if you're one of the few without that and can put yourself aside for a second, that really stands out more than anything else. I would say start now. Start practicing being so easy to work with, put yourself aside. We do need a living wage at some point, but you are lucky to be here. Being able to dance ballet and make it your job is everything. At least make it look like you're happy to be there, even if you may not be treated great in the beginning.”

Troy said dancers should be aware of how competitive ballet is.

“There are very, very extreme and very, very particular standards for aesthetic beauty when it comes to ballet,” he said. “One of the most important pillars of ballet is line. Having a nice line, to look at it on stage, line plus ability, that's what all the greats have. Really look at yourself and be honest with yourself, talk with professionals and expose yourself.”

Troy advised dancers to make connections.

“That's the other thing to professionals is connection,” he said. “Make connections. Don't burn any bridge, ever. Use your connections. Don't be afraid to use them. That's not a bad thing.”

Troy stressed the need for artists to work for what they want.

“Don't settle for mediocrity,” he said. “There's always someone out there that's better than you. That's the frustrating part. But it's also the best part because there's always something you can be doing better.”

Troy said those wanting to start working out to do so.

“Just try it,” he said. “You can go on YouTube and look up any exercise you've never worked on before. Go on YouTube and find a workout you think you can do and follow along, and then from there, your knowledge just grows. Go to the gym. If you're in between sets and you see someone who looks like they know what they're doing. You see them doing an exercise that you might want to try. Try it.”

Troy said beginners shouldn’t rush it.

“It's baby steps,” he said. “The one thing I always like to point out is where you are at right now didn't happen in a day. It's happened over years of habits. Culminating this culture in your life of creating new habits over years of time is really how you do anything.”

Troy’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/troy_monger_/

Troy’s ballet Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/troy_monger/