The one thing that froze his “hyper” West Chester childhood in mid-sprint is still commanding his composure on one of the world’s biggest ballet stages.
Taylor Stanley, the 24-year-old star of the New York City Ballet, first refined his compulsion to move by taking up ballet, tap and jazz lessons at West Chester’s The Rock School for Dance Education at the early age of 3.
“I was so drawn to the production elements, from the costumes to the scenery and the energy,” he said in an interview by Gia Kourlas featured in The New York Times.
Since those West Chester days, Stanley has learned to channel his energy into an uncanny but incredibly successful chill “because it’s making up for other feelings — my mechanism for keeping calm and staying rational among the irrationality and insecurities that come with presenting yourself to such a huge group of people every day,” he said in the article.
And though he has become “one of the purest interpreters of movement that I’ve come across,” NYCB Choreographer Justin Peck said, he still hasn’t mastered that refining — nor his character. That was a prime motivation for his recent enrollment in classes at the Nederlands Dans Theater.
“My whole life, I’ve been this kind of quiet, shy person who people see as talented or whatever, and they pin me as a humble person,” he said.
“My ears have heard the words ‘humble’ and ‘humility’ so often that they turn me off. It can translate into self-deprecation if I don’t put myself into certain situations that really teach me what humility is. [The program] chewed me up and spit me out.”
Read much more about Stanley and his journey from West Chester to New York City and beyond in The New York Times here.
