00:00I'm Indiana Woodward, and I'm a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet.
00:07I'm going to take you through what a day in the life looks like as the Sugar Plum Fairy in George Balanchine's The Nutcracker,
00:14right here in my hometown of New York City.
00:17Here we go!
00:19A normal routine for me on a performance day is waking up nice and easy with Luna,
00:30and then going into the kitchen, having a little piece of fruit.
00:34I usually boil some eggs, and then I make myself a cup of coffee,
00:39and I go back in my bed and I read for about half an hour.
00:43I'm a morning person, but Luna is really not.
00:49Most mornings I walk through Central Park with my pup Luna,
00:58and we love it because we can get a little bit of peace of nature before going inside a building with no windows,
01:04which I love, but you can't tell the time of day.
01:07Sadly, today it's raining, so we are going to take a cab.
01:13Working at the Lincoln Center is very, very special because it's just pretty magical,
01:18walking across that plaza.
01:21Seeing the fountain is just a dream.
01:24It's an iconic setting.
01:26I really just can't believe that I get to work there every day.
01:29So this is my dressing room.
01:32I share it with another principal and best friend of mine, Unity Phelan.
01:37It's like my second apartment, as you can see.
01:39Clothes, leotards, little merred trinkets.
01:43We say that for good luck or break a leg.
01:46Merred means shit, yes, in French.
01:48In France, wherever there was an opera, if there were a ton of horse-strung carriages,
01:53the longer that they would be out there, the more shit there was, literally,
01:57because they would be getting standing ovations.
01:59So merred is now our way of saying good luck to each other and to have a really good show.
02:05Isn't that cool?
02:06I'm going to perform today at 5pm, the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Nutcracker.
02:12And right now I'm going to get ready for class with my doggy, Luna.
02:15So I'm going to have to ask you all to leave.
02:20I will be doing class right now with a resident choreographer, Alexey Ratmansky.
02:25So it's going to be a really fun, hard, kick you in the butt kind of class.
02:29Class is one of my favorite times during the day.
02:31I get to see all my friends as a principal dancer,
02:34which I'm so lucky to be and I've worked so hard for.
02:37I perform a lot alone and I do lots of solo work or with one other person.
02:42So I don't get to see my friends as much or be with the corps de ballet.
02:46And so class is a very important time to warm up the body primarily,
02:51but also to kind of get in a little bit of social hour so I can see my friends,
02:56give them a hug, catch up in the day,
02:58because then I won't necessarily see them throughout the day.
03:00I've been warned not to exhaust you.
03:06To be a New York City ballet dancer,
03:08you have to be one of the top athletes and the top dancers in the world.
03:11You have to be dynamic, super quick, musical,
03:15and definitely learn steps at a moment's notice.
03:18I'm taking you into the shoe room, which is where we keep all of our beautiful pointe shoes.
03:30The whole room is just filled.
03:32This is my pointe shoe area and I have all of my pointe shoes.
03:36They're mostly all freed of London.
03:39The pink shoes are my skin tone shoes.
03:41And typically I sew ribbons on either side and elastic.
03:47And I give them a nice little bend if you can hear the little crunch.
03:51That's how we like it so that it can be nice and molded to your foot.
03:54Typically, I would go through a shoe, a performance.
03:59If I'm in multiple pieces, I could have up to four shows a week.
04:02And then that would be for pointe shoes.
04:05It can get really like a big amount very quickly.
04:08So we just came from the theater where I left Luna because she's not allowed in the Russian bathhouse where I'm bringing you today.
04:20And we're going to have a little schvitz so that I can really feel good in my performance tonight.
04:25I've been coming here for 15 years.
04:27My dad, uncle, and aunt showed me this place.
04:30It was founded in 1892.
04:33This is the Russian room.
04:36It's my favorite room here.
04:37It's the hottest one and it's 200 degrees.
04:43Going to the Russian Turkish baths is relaxing and very helpful for restarting my day.
04:50But also it's essential for inflammation.
04:53So doing the therapy that is heat and cold plunging, it really helps all the circulation in your body.
04:59So that you can really like restart and rewarm up your body to the best of its ability for the show.
05:06This time in my day is basically to heal my body and make sure everything is nice and strong and released and healed before I go and explode on stage.
05:18I do red light therapy, which is laser.
05:21And then I go into physical therapy, hopefully get a bit of a massage and then do some gyrotonics and some pilates to finish off.
05:31All dancers struggle with keeping their bodies totally maintained and pain free.
05:36So this time of day where you're healing your body is super important.
05:40It's constantly a mystery of trying to figure out what's hurting, where it's coming from, and then how to address it.
05:46Yeah, if this is feeling okay.
05:47Because that was a little scary.
05:48Yeah.
05:49I like to warm up from my feet to the top of my head.
05:52I like to take it through a couple of exercises.
05:54So doing some doming to really get things like woken up so that I know when I'm doing my tendu and like warming that tendu up, I know how to point basically.
06:06I've been doing ballet since I was three years old.
06:09And what's helped so much is through the ages, I've found things that have helped me be a stronger, better dancer and specifically learn about my body.
06:18So what I like to eat before a show is a hard boiled egg for protein, super important for your body.
06:28And sometimes I'll have one to two, depending on the show.
06:31This is my oatmeal.
06:32It looks really gnarly, but it's really delicious.
06:35It has raisins, some turmeric for inflammation, cinnamon and honey, and it's for a little bit more of a long lasting carb.
06:41A little apple for freshness and then seaweed for salt and a little bit of greens.
06:47This protein shake that basically tastes like chocolate milk, but it's dairy free.
06:51So again, super easy to digest.
06:53And then the last thing is this chocolate sea salt protein bar.
06:57It has tons of superfoods so that it goes nicely through your body, but it fuels you.
07:03I'm small, so I'm always chosen to do kind of like crazy lifts or crazy turns with lifts or being upside down.
07:11I get kind of motion sickness.
07:13And so all of these snacks that I have, I get the fuel, but I also digest it.
07:17Cause that's crucial as an athlete.
07:23Hi Stanley.
07:25See for you, you need round like this.
07:27Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
07:28So this one for you, I think it's more imperial looking.
07:30Yeah.
07:31To be more wide and round.
07:32Stanley's our hair magician.
07:34Want me to hold it?
07:36Right there.
07:37The effect of all of these should be, you know, as is the Balanchine aesthetic of the long neck.
07:44Yeah.
07:45And anything that's tapered in the back, it automatically adds six inches to the neckline.
07:49Oh, really?
07:50Yes.
07:51It takes you right up there.
07:52Oh, wow.
07:53Yeah.
07:54You pinch the back a little, as narrow as you can get.
07:56Oh, I love that.
07:57And then you don't have to do that.
07:59It's already there.
08:00That's so nice.
08:01It's not just because, oh, it looks pretty.
08:03There's a reason it looks pretty.
08:05Totally.
08:06Shake, turn.
08:07Feels great.
08:09Feels great.
08:10Perfect.
08:11Thank you, Stanley.
08:12You're welcome.
08:13Thank you so much.
08:14So now I'm going to start putting on my makeup.
08:17We all get a basic tutorial at the beginning of our careers here when we're apprentices,
08:23so that we get a basic lesson, but then we are the people that do our makeup for every
08:28single one of our shows.
08:30We have people that we can ask for touch-ups, but primarily we do it ourselves.
08:35So it's kind of another meditative time.
08:40When I put on my costumes for the Sugar Plum Fairy, the first one allows me to just enter
08:45in this beautiful, beautiful, imaginative, world-like adventurous landscape of snow and magic and candy.
08:54And then the second one allows me to enter into this very regal, almost ethereal, mint green,
09:02beautiful fairy that gets to dance with a cavalier.
09:05And they just allow me to transport into the character.
09:10I'm about to dance the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy in George Balanchine's The Nutcracker.
09:14As Bettina, my dresser, is clipping me in, I can feel my body just elevating ever so slightly.
09:21My posture is getting taller, and I feel very magical.
09:26The second act is about to start, and I'm about to dance my Sugar Plum solo.
09:30I'm always a little bit nervous, but I like to try to go into an extreme zen mode
09:36and tell myself I can do it right before I turn.
09:39Before I go onto the stage, every single dancer in The Nutcracker blows me out,
09:46and it's almost like a wave of energy and love where they twinkle their fingertips and send me off on the stage.
09:56When I dance the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy, I'm looking out into an audience that is thousands of people.
10:02And when you get to be backstage, which is where I primarily get to be, it's very cozy, quaint, and very family-like.
10:11We're all there to help each other. We really get each other through the show and enjoy our time on stage thanks to the support of one another.
10:21And there's a really big sense of camaraderie, which is basically one of my favorite parts of my job.
10:29After the show, I usually get a couple of corrections from my repertory directors or my directors.
10:36It went so well. Dancing with all of my friends is just the best thing of this job.
10:42I finished the show, and what I do for my body so that it feels good for tomorrow is I cold plunge,
10:52and we have this amazing facility. It's called Arctic Circle.
10:55Basically, just a bucket of cold water, and we take a quick shower, and then we go and plunge
11:00so that our bodies get really, really cold for about two minutes, three if you can stand it, and then you're done for the night.
11:07Get in here. Everyone in. We're trapped.
11:16It's about 8 o'clock. I just finished the show, and now I'm going to celebrate at the Smith with my mom and my best friend, Lane.
11:23My go-to order at the Smith is usually the vegetable bibimbap with a little bit of salmon on top.
11:28Sometimes I'll get a drink when I'm at the Smith, but it depends on the day.
11:32If I don't have any work the next day, then I most likely will get a Negroni,
11:37and then if I do have work the next day, I stick with water.
11:41I usually take the subway home at the end of the day because it is the fastest way home,
11:46and it's super quintessential New York City, and Luna is with me, so she keeps me safe on the train, too.
11:54And then tomorrow I'm going to get up and I'm going to do it all over again.
12:01I'm going to do it all over again.
12:02I'm going to do it all over again.
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