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Time out: dancers are finding rejuvenation in the freedom to take time off.

Article Excerpt
Never mind the "It's-opening-night-and-I-forgot-to-rehearse" nightmare. What haunts dancers most is the specter of having to leave their art behind. There comes a day when all dancers must relinquish, in some form, the thing they love most, because they can no longer meet the rigors of the professional world or they have to reconcile themselves to the demands outside of it. Injury, age, family life, and economics are the biggest factors that drive dancers away, and there is never a shortage of ambitious dancers to replace them. In such a competitive climate, it's hard to imagine coming back after leaving for any length of time.

But people have done it, and for some, leaving dance--whether by someone else's choosing or by their own--was not only possible, it changed their thinking, and their dancing, for the better.

Edward Villella, the celebrated New York City Ballet principal-turned-artistic director of Miami City Ballet, has a story that will sound familiar to anyone who has ever battled with their parents over a dance career. At 10, he entered the School of American Ballet, but interrupted his dance training at age 16 to attend the Bronx-based New York Maritime Academy. Villella hadn't wanted to go, but his father, who wasn't comfortable with his son being a ballet dancer, insisted. "To give you an idea," he says, "my father's two best friends were former professional prizefighters."

He earned a BS in marine transportation from the...

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