This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:04] Kerry Butler: Once I played a penny who just couldn't stop the beat.

[0:10] Kerry Butler: Yes, with rather skates on her feet.

[0:17] Kerry Butler: Although just recently to see.

[0:24] Kerry Butler: A real quo.

[0:27] Kerry Butler: Musical version of Tina.

[0:33] Kerry Butler: Tina.

[0:36] Kerry Butler: Now come with me, Emma.

[0:40] Kerry Butler: I am your host, Miss Kerry Butler.

[0:44] Kerry Butler: Together, you and I are breaking Broadway.

[0:54] Kerry Butler: Welcome to Breaking Broadway.

[0:57] Kerry Butler: I recently announced the launch of my signature course, Breaking Into Broadway, and I have a super special offer just for my podcast listeners.

[1:06] Kerry Butler: Check it out at kerrybutlercoach.com slash Broadway Podcast.

[1:12] Kerry Butler: I'm doing a series now about training to do eight shows a week and how do we do it?

[1:22] Kerry Butler: And now I'm gonna welcome our first guest, Aurore Joly, a performer, certified elite trainer, and holistic health coach.

[1:31] Kerry Butler: Aurore has also performed and toured all around the world with hit Broadway shows such as Chicago the Musical, as well as a large variety of musical artists.

[1:40] Kerry Butler: She is now the owner of Move Art Studio, a private Pilates, GYROTONIC, and holistic wellness studio in New Jersey.

[1:47] Kerry Butler: And we met because she is helping to heal me from injuries at Beetlejuice.

[1:56] Kerry Butler: Thank you so much for being here. Welcome.

[1:59] Aurore Joly: Thank you so much for having me, Kerry.

[2:02] Aurore Joly: Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here with you.

[2:05] Kerry Butler: Well, you have such an interesting story. And so I wanted to know your journey to coming to America if you haven't been able to tell already, or is from France.

[2:17] Aurore Joly: I am from France, originally from Burgundy, born and raised in Burgundy, and then made my way out to Paris super young when I was 11 to become a professional ballerina.

[2:31] Aurore Joly: So it's been a long career.

[2:33] Kerry Butler: What was that like moving out of your home at 11?

[2:37] Aurore Joly: It was very intense. My daughter's 11. I can't imagine her leaving me.

[2:46] Aurore Joly: I know. Like for my parents, I think my, I mean, everyone around my parents, like everyone thought they were crazy.

[2:54] Aurore Joly: And I have two big sisters who are 13 and 14 years older than me. So I'm like the baby who had like all the love and all the care, and yeah, so my parents, everyone were like, you guys are crazy, but I said I want to dance, and this is what I want to do.

[3:15] Aurore Joly: So I think my passion was so strong, then my mom was like, okay, let's try it.

[3:21] Kerry Butler: When did you start dancing?

[3:22] Aurore Joly: I started ballet first time I was four years old. All I wanted was a tutu, and then the studio closed. We just talked about it with my mom, and I started again when I was six years old, and then from six years old until now, and yeah, it's been many years, and I have not stopped dancing, even through different journeys and seasons of my life and injuries, diseases.

[3:53] Aurore Joly: But dance is my home. That's where being like at a bar, moving my body, it's home. That's where I feel happy and connected and alive. That's really what it is. You know, it's part of my life. I think I know like just yeah, dancing is it's more intuitive for me than walking, especially running. I'm not a runner at all. So yeah, so it's home, dance is home, yeah.

[4:23] Kerry Butler: So you moved to Paris at 11. We're dancing.

[4:27] Aurore Joly: Yes. In professional companies, yes.

[4:32] Aurore Joly: So I entered a big ballet school there and then started touring because it was a children's ballet company. So right away we were in putting these big roles and these big costumes and touring and buses, and we all had like we looked like Madeline, you know. We all have the little berets.

[4:54] Aurore Joly: That's like little berets with the little band that you see all these little girls like walking, like my mom still has the beret. I didn't want to wear it anymore, and then I'm like, I do love berets, so now I do wear berets all the time. I'm very French sideways.

[5:09] Kerry Butler: I didn't even know what you were talking about first, because we call them berets.

[5:12] Aurore Joly: That's what I'm, I was like, wait, what? Is it a bear?

[5:17] Kerry Butler: Yeah, obviously, wear the wrong ones.

[5:20] Aurore Joly: Yeah, like this, you know, there's certain words that I can. Like, I'm like, it's a baby.

[5:25] Kerry Butler: Um, okay. So then what happened after that?

[5:28] Aurore Joly: So after that, so I did two years in that big school, and then I transferred to another school in the south of France, also as well, owned by the wonderful ballerina, Rosella Hightower, an American ballerina who used to dance for the Marquis de Cuevas dance company, very old company in Europe, beautiful dancer.

[5:52] Aurore Joly: I mean, Nijinsky danced there, like it's, yeah, it's that. So Rosella Hightower was a wonderful mentor for me. She spotted me at an audition and was like, you need to come to my school, you have what it takes to keep going, so let's go.

[6:08] Aurore Joly: And she became my teacher and she asked me to join her school, but I was 13 years old.

[6:14] Kerry Butler: So wow, so I was closer to my family when I was like 11, 12 years old because I was, you know, in Paris, and my family lived like an hour and a half away.

[6:26] Aurore Joly: So train rides were easy. And then I went to the south of France when it's a 10-hour car drive, you know. So I was seeing my parents like every four months, every five months.

[6:39] Kerry Butler: Oh, so you're really on your own.

[6:42] Aurore Joly: You're an intern. You have to be try to be good at school. They ask a lot of you. You have dance in the morning, pardon me. We have school in the morning, and then we have dance in the afternoon, and then in the evening, you had rehearsals for shows, and you had to do your homework, and you had to, you know, do your laundry because you don't have any parents to do that. You have to be an adult.

[7:12] Aurore Joly: So I became an adult, like really young. And in the world of ballet, too, truth be told, yeah, it's when you live your home so young at 11, the world is rough. The world is rough for a young little girl, a young 11-year-old girl. You're easily a prey for adults around. There's a lot of abuse. But through that, I still can't understand why sometimes I didn't go back home from the abuse and the hurt surrounding it.

[7:48] Aurore Joly: And you don't especially tell your parents anything. Sometimes it's dance teachers who see something, the good ones, and who are gonna reach out to your parents to be like, yeah, there's something going on. It's hard, it's very lonely, very lonely. You're already very competitive. I was not really that kid. I've never been like that. I'm not very competitive, I just love art and I love dancing, and I loved already singing and acting.

[8:20] Aurore Joly: I started acting also really young during that time during some touring with some theater companies, so that's what I wanted to do. And even if life was hard, that was my art, was my safe place where I felt hurt, I felt safe, I felt love, I felt I could express myself. I felt that nothing was hurting anymore.

[8:49] Aurore Joly: And I can feel that nowadays, like being older with a body sometimes who hurts a lot as a dancer, but as soon as I put these shoes on and I start moving, everything is gone. Everything is gone. Just the curtain opens up and then something else like embodies you. So it started really young.

[9:09] Kerry Butler: So then you went to school with her, and then were you working in?

[9:09] Aurore Joly: Yes, I went to school with her.

[9:17] Kerry Butler: Were you working in France after that?

[9:19] Aurore Joly: Yeah, yeah. Yes, I stayed two years after that. And then after I joined another big ballet company, the ballet of Roland Petit. Roland Petit is, I'm sure everyone knows Leslie Caron. Leslie Caron is an American in Paris. So she was a mentor also for me, very young.

[9:39] Aurore Joly: So we met at a competition, and Leslie said she's like, you need to go into Roland's school because Roland Petit was a mentor for her as well. And so it's the school of Zizi Jeanmaire and Roland Petit.

[9:54] Aurore Joly: So I was, how old I was? I was 15 years old when I joined the school. It was hard. It was hard. But Roland was, I mean, the chance I had to meet Roland Petit, and to see Zizi Jeanmaire, who was 17 years old. And Pilates, like, I mean, we didn't have Pilates in France at the time.

[10:19] Aurore Joly: So she started, she was doing Pilates and she was already, and she was seven years old, and we're seeing her on the machine, and we're this 15-year-old girls, you know. So incredible people. They gave a lot to me. But yeah, I started singing more during that time, and Roland Petit was like, you need to sing. That's your thing.

[10:43] Aurore Joly: Do you love musical theater? And in France we didn't have musical theater. I mean, this didn't exist. Like, so for me, it was always like a dream of the US and America, and because of this excellence, and also from my mentors. My mentors were Americans or were people who made it in the US.

[11:03] Aurore Joly: So had these very eclectic careers. And yeah, that's it.

[11:11] Kerry Butler: So then how did you get to America?

[11:13] Aurore Joly: How did I get to America? Oh god. I know you were doing, you did a lot of film in France and you did, you did Cannes, right?

[11:21] Aurore Joly: Yes, I danced in the Folies Bergère, was a soloist when I was 20 years old, when they reopened the show at the Folies Bergère. Dancing my first job was in a little cabaret in Paris where I did Cannes. I wore like crazy feathers and so that's how you start.

[11:29] Aurore Joly: That's how you start because I wanted to come to the US, but I don't come from a family who's wealthy. It's difficult, it's really difficult. It's a dream, and everyone around me, especially at the time, like it's early 2000s.

[11:57] Aurore Joly: So when I came here in the US the first time, it was after 9/11. It was like 2003, 2004. And so for me to be able to come to the US, I auditioned for the Alvin Ailey School. I auditioned for Juilliard, passed all of them, but then I didn't realize that you had to pay for American school.

[12:23] Aurore Joly: Which it's important to say that guys in France, you do not have to pay for school really you don't have to pay for school if you're good getting into the school. I mean all my life as a dancer in these big schools I had scholarships. No way I had a lot of help, yeah, because my parents didn't have like ballet at the time too it's for the elite. My parents were always in debt trying to send me to school buying my dance shoes, so it was very, very tough for my family.

[12:23] Aurore Joly: And my sister also was a military raised me and took care of me and sent me to those dance schools and bought my ballet shoes and my education. But compared to the US when I remember seeing the prices of school I didn't realize and then it wasn't internet wasn't that big at the time so I was receiving everything through mail and I have these big like you know you had to send a picture with an arabesque with an à la seconde to the school, yeah, so extremely expensive so I was like this is not the way to go obviously I'm not gonna be able to do that so how am I gonna do this?

[13:42] Aurore Joly: And also I didn't, yeah at the time didn't speak English at all gosh really my loophole not at all so my loophole was I saw an ad at this big dance studio in Paris, Studio Harmony, where I was dancing a lot and it says looking for an au pair in New York from a dancer family.

[14:06] Aurore Joly: So these amazing dancers were actually on AIDA the musical of the time. Yeah, I'm sure you know some of them. So they're like, we need, the mom was French and the dad was American. So they're like, we want our daughter to speak French every day.

[14:23] Aurore Joly: So that's how I made my way to the US. Didn't speak English at all. I remember I was in the plane, the plane landed, no one came to pick me up at JFK. I had to, I had a paper with just the address in Brooklyn and address in Brooklyn. And then it was my driver was Pakistani who didn't speak English at all.

[14:44] Aurore Joly: So we were both of us making like movement and gestures. Just me saying him and I remember that drive from JFK to Brooklyn it was like I think I'll never forget that, just going through those neighborhoods and just what you imagine in your brain and then it becomes reality.

[15:06] Aurore Joly: Times Square now we see it every day. I see it all the time and I'm like, "Whoo, great!" I remember the first time seeing Broadway shows. It was definitely a journey. I was an au pair for six months and then met wonderful choreographers here who were like, "What is your visa status? What is going on? You have a lot of potential. Is this what you want to do?" I said, "This is what I want to do." So they told me, "You gotta go back to France and find a way to come back with a visa." At the time, we were more naive than people are nowadays because we didn't have access to the internet like we do now. You couldn't go on Google and be like, "How to get a visa to go to the United States." No. So it was through lawyers and people who lived a similar journey that I was able to come back, but it still took two years for me to come back.

In the meantime, I met my husband. I came back to LA, not New York, because I met some child-referring friends from LA, and they were like, "Come to LA and we'll help you out." So I came to the US with a student visa and then auditioned for agencies because at the time you needed to have an agency to have sponsors. Sponsors were your agency, and then you had to book a big show to be able to get your visa, which was very difficult to get. You had to prove that the US needed you, that you were better than someone else. It was a lot of fights. So after that, my time in the US was always fighting and struggling but not giving up.

[17:19] Kerry Butler: So you actually got a good job through a Zoom audition or an on-camera audition for a musical, which I feel like is so rare, right? You got the Goodspeed job, yes, through a video, right?

[17:35] Aurore Joly: I did, yes, an audition video. I saw "Cabaret," and I'm like, "Well, I've done 'Cabaret' before. This is not out of my league. I'm Frenchy through and through." So I just sent a tape and sent the audition. I got a callback, and I had the chance to go in person. It was at the beginning of 2022, February 2022. I sent the audition in December, and it was a big deal because after the pandemic, it was my first callback in person in a room with so many other dancers, but we had our masks on through the whole audition. I just removed my mask when I had to sing and then put it back on. They did a really good job. So, yeah, and then I booked the show, and it was a dream come true after all that time being away from the stage.

I hadn't danced on stage for at least six years because of an autoimmune disease. I was on tour with "Chicago" and got really sick, so I thought I would never dance again. This show meant a lot to me, being back on stage and on a beautiful stage like Goodspeed, telling a story like "Cabaret," which is still sadly so relevant. We had wonderful directors, James Basquez and Lenny Sakakura as a choreographer. I mean, we did the original "Mindhair" choreography on the chair. It was incredible, yeah, so I felt very blessed.

[19:30] Kerry Butler: That brings me to our topic today, which is all about taking care of ourselves and treating our bodies like athletes because we do get injuries all the time. During "Beetlejuice," I got an injury when I had to do this trick where I would fall through the floor. One day, I was going on with an understudy, totally not the understudy's fault at all, but he wasn't properly taught how to fall through the floor, and so I kind of landed on his knees, and it crunched my spine a little bit. I was going to acupuncture, and it wasn't a terrible injury; it was just annoying and painful all the time. Doing a show eight times a week is, you know, I never talk about this because I never like to complain, and it's just the way it is.

You're pretty much always gonna be in pain. Something is always gonna be bothering you, or your voice is gonna be bad. That just goes with the territory. So I tried acupuncture. I did physical therapy. I was getting things done like three times a week just so I could do all the shows and not miss shows. They helped, but it did get better with physical therapy. Then I started doing Pilates for kind of the first time. I had done it before but never with the machine, and I love the machine. I started working with Aurore, and she had kind of the same journey where these injuries and illnesses are what made you learn and get certified in all of this, right?

[21:18] Aurore Joly: Exactly. 100%. It's very hard when you do eight shows a week, or also aging through the business. I have people from every walk of life. I have football players, NFL players, Broadway actors, professional ballroom dancers, everyday people, people who have Parkinson's, people who have MS. We're all always in pain. That's life. We always have something. Old injuries can create patterns, and old injuries that we think, "Oh, I'm fine, I had this," like my foot broke when I was 18 years old. You don't realize that through the years, your body's so smart; it just compensates. So you're like, "Oh, my left hip has been weird for a while." I'm always trying to get all this information from my clients because there's a reason why we often have an injury because of another injury or because we do eight shows a week for actors.

You do often the same leg, the same movement every day, eight shows a week. It's repetition. Someone working on a machine will also have some issues and injuries from that because it's repetition. That's why people who are sitting in front of their computers all day have neck issues from leaning forward and low back pain because they're seated all day, which is also a form of being repetitive.

[23:11] Kerry Butler: So we gotta break the pattern and cross-train and get stronger and realign the body.

[23:21] Aurore Joly: It takes time, dedication, and a lot of understanding of how the mechanics work for your client because you carry differently than someone else. What works for you? I work very holistically and somatically in the way that our bodies hold trauma. Our bodies hold all the traumas we've gone through in our lives, all the pain, the grief; everything is lodged in our bodies. If something acts up, for example, the psoas is really the muscle of the soul. It's connected to the reptilian brain; it's for fight or flight. Sometimes, as actors, we're in a situation on stage where we are in a fight or flight.

[24:17] Kerry Butler: Right. That's my thing. You work with me on the psoas all the time.

[24:23] Aurore Joly: Exactly. That's why I'm saying that. Yes, and doing these big stunts every night, the body has to react; it has to be in a protective mode. What we have to do is be able to release those muscles, but also what is tight is often weak as well. So, realigning and really assessing the whole body. We cannot work on only one part of the body. I say, "Oh, my hip hurts." Well, chances are if my left hip hurts, my right shoulder might be hurting at some point too. We have fascia; we have connective tissues. Everything is connected, as we all are connected on this earth. So we have to look at the body as a whole.

[25:13] Aurore Joly: That's why when my clients come into the room for a session, we talk. I ask them how their week was. We share a lot of very private conversations. If their week was bad, or if they had a bad day, or if it was hard at a show, everything comes out, and then we're ready to work. It's all out in the universe, and now we're ready to heal the body.

[25:44] Kerry Butler: What is it about Pilates and the Gyrotonic? How are they different than say other workouts, like running?

[25:49] Aurore Joly: Yeah, it's very different. You work on the whole body when you do. I'm gonna talk about Pilates first because it's different than Gyrotonic. Pilates is more linear work, but we all have our styles of teaching Pilates. The way I teach it, I bring a lot of functional movement into it, and I use the machine in a different way. There's so much to do with these machines. It's weight-bearing, which is wonderful. It's very lengthening; it's a way of lengthening your body and working in a way that aligns your body. Just doing footwork on the reformer, if one hip is a little high, that's very when I start putting you on the reformer. That's how I start to align your body because one hip is pushing more.

So really working on details. Pilates works the whole body and makes you strong all over, especially your core. You've seen the Da Vinci painting with the arms extended. Imagine everything comes from the core. If your core is not strong, it's the roots of your body. Pilates really focuses on the powerhouse and on the core. Glutes are core, inner thighs are core, lats are core. You need a strong trunk to be able to do eight shows a week but also to have a long life. I have very young people, kids doing Pilates, and I also have people in their 90s doing Pilates.

[27:40] Kerry Butler: I love it in a different way. I love it so much. When I leave, I feel like every part of my body feels alive. It's like I feel everything. A lot of times when I work out, I guess sometimes people work out and they're like, "Oh, I feel a high." I don't ever feel that. I'm like, "Oh yeah, finally I got through it at least." But I leave feeling a high, and I do feel like you really strengthen me in the places that I'm weak, which is what is causing the injuries.

[28:03] Kerry Butler: Um, I'll, I'll, I would have to go for massages a lot.

[28:11] Kerry Butler: I feel so much better not getting a massage and getting the stretch that I get from you and the Pilates.

[28:18] Kerry Butler: It's so much better than just getting a massage or just laying down and getting the acupuncture, which does help and relaxes me, but yeah, also just I think what you're doing, how you're, you are strengthening.

[28:35] Aurore Joly: Yes, and sometimes we, as dancers, overstretch. I overstretched for years as a ballerina too. More and more, we're seeing that overstretching is not a good thing. You have to do some active stretches, which we do a lot for you in Pilates. Pilates is mainly active stretches, so your body reacts better. Strengthening the muscles while stretching the fibers is actually not gonna make you strong. Strengthening the muscles will also, in the long run, make you more flexible at the end. So it goes hand in hand.

[29:19] Kerry Butler: And Gyrotonic?

[29:22] Aurore Joly: Yeah, I'm not ready to do the Gyrotonic yet, right? You said I'm not strong enough.

[29:26] Kerry Butler: Not yet.

[29:27] Aurore Joly: Not yet, not yet. You're not strong enough.

[29:30] Kerry Butler: I can't handle the Gyrotonic yet.

[29:34] Aurore Joly: You can't handle the Pilates, which stays a lot. Gyrotonic is why you can't handle it right now; it's because it's circular movement. Especially with your injury, there's a lot of movement.

[29:51] Aurore Joly: We need to make your core stronger right now, and then I'll put you on a gyro, and yeah, gyro is circular. It's like to imagine, because they have these fancy ways to talk about it. I'm gonna say it's like dancing, swimming, tai chi, yoga, all of that. On crap, it's extraordinary. It's um, I mean, I had that I went, I I found Pilates and gyro tonic because of a hip injury from cancan, uh, arthritis and laboral tear. So Pilates made my hip really strong, really solid and very stable, very strong pelvic floor, a very stable pelvic floor, and then with gyro, I got the range of motion. It's really 3D. You have range of motion that you wouldn't be able to do with Pilates or any other um any other form of exercises.

Gyrotonic really works on the fascia, works on uh it's a somatic work on the breast, on decompressing the spine, decompressing into joint, creates space. So it's beautiful for everyone, and also for dancers. We use it, we do gyro tonic for dancer when we use the pulley on the feet. You can do a whole bar like that. And dancers will feel, oh, my leg is heavy, I can't lift it. With assistance, you can recruit the right muscles. Um, and gyratonic gives you that ability. It's really these these machines and these methods, because you can't do Pilates on the match, you can do gyrachnistis, which is just the stool, which I did when I was at good speed. I didn't have my machine, so I had my stool, I had my mat, uh, and I did gyratonic every morning before rehearsal, every day before the show, and some very specific functional movement.

Because when we perform, we have to have a routine that is specific to you with some exercises who are not dancing to be able to strengthen and wake up the muscles that you're gonna need to recruit during your show, during a two-hour show or two hour and a half show.

[32:16] Kerry Butler: Yeah, I mean, I can't imagine being a dancer for but for as long as you have, and anybody in general. I mean, like my injuries are you know, from being on a rigged stage or little things, but but you've had real injuries, and you injured yourself doing that good speed show too, right?

[32:33] Aurore Joly: Yes, I did. And so you started the Pilates with the other injury because you weren't being you weren't healed, is that right? And so then you had to find out on your own.

[32:41] Aurore Joly: Yes. So I started uh, and also can we stay a dancer? We're broke, we don't have the money. So, you know, when I have when I worked with uh a big NFL player, I was telling him, I'm like, he's like you dancer or something else. I have after working together, he's like I've founding such a re huge respect for dancers in the way you know your body, how athletic you guys are, and sometimes, yeah, people forget we are athletes, but we don't have access to the care. That's something that's very um near and dear to my heart. We do not have access to the care that these champions have, of course, because we're in an industry, even if you're in a dance company or a Broadway show, now even in a Broadway show, it's rare to on a tour. We do we do not have um PTs with us anymore often. I mean, when you're in a broadway show, it's easier because I guess you have a steady income.

[33:49] Kerry Butler: Yeah, we we have had we have had physical therapy on all my Broadway shoes.

[33:53] Aurore Joly: That's amazing. Yeah, but it's still not enough, I don't think. I mean, it's like you get a little 20-minute slot. So for I mean, I was lucky because I could afford other things, so I was able to get the 20-minute slot and do you and do physical therapy, things like that. But yeah, other people that that would be really um expensive. I mean, as a young dancer, I didn't, you know, when you're training and you're just auditioning, and I see all my friends who are in their 20s, they cannot afford that. So I started Pilates because of my hip. So before I was able to do some math Pilates, I after canken, I um I was diagnosed with arthritis of the hip joints, so very young, 28 years old, just too young to have arthritis with a laboral tear.

We didn't want me to get surgery. I did the traditional physical therapy, got injections in my hip. It was not getting better. So one of my doctors actually, who was a great sport doctor, told me, Listen, Ora, I think your best option, you need to do Pilates, and so I didn't have the money especially to do Pilates all the time, and especially on reformers. So I'm met some mentors, and uh I'm like, I think I wanna get certified in Pilates, so I'll be able to do my own thing. And that's what I did. And I did that in the same time that I was on tour with Chicago. We had a you know layup for like three months, and then I jumped into half of the training, and then a year later jumped into uh half of the rest of the training.

And uh, and so Pilates saved my hip. Pilates saved my career for 10 more years, and still now, every time that I'm injured, it still brings me back. Uh when I'm in pain or the injury that I sustained at good speed. Uh, the first thing I do is I go back on the reformer and I start with the footwork, and uh I see where I'm at. And you have the chair in Pilates, you have the Cadillac machines. I mean, there's so much, and there's this is a temple. These machines are, I mean, I can't say enough about those methods because they really have saved my body and saved my career. And then Jaratonic came after that, uh, through one of my colleagues who was a master teacher in Jaritanic when I was working in a big Pilates studio in LA.

And she told me, she's like, you need to do it. This is gonna change your life. My psyches were always very tight, my head flexors. Uh, I had this really painful autoimmune disease where my joints were very painful, always in flame, and my muscles were always icky, and uh jar Pilates sometimes felt too hard when I was in that state of inflammation, and the gyro brought something else. In my worst moments in pain with my autoimmune disease, I was also going on a gyro, doing just a little bit, and it's just this feeling, it just opens your body in such a way and make it more flexible, make it more gooey. I do gyro before I take a dance class, before I go do a dance audition because it helps it opens up everything and it helps me connect fire, also the right muscles.

And these methods are like without these methods, I believe in them so much, and I think that is something that you never stop doing. I know in my 80s, if I'm still here, yeah, I will my practice, of course, will be different. You can use these methods when you're 15 years old, when you're a 20-year-old dancer or a ballet star, or and when you're older, when you're 80 years old or 95 years old, and just to move the body, move the spine, and my client clients they always live leave the studio like feeling energized, yeah, and better and more aware of their body with more often you come too and you're like, yes, now I'm like feeling of how their body function. And I get it. I understand. And so it's all I can ask just to be able to bring to people uh a better way of life and healthy build healthy habits.

This should be a part of a lot of actors, dancers, everyday Joe's. Like, I'm like, do Pilates, do Jaratonic, do also any kind of movement. Just move. If you do not like Pilates or Jaratonic, then move. Do something. But do something with someone who knows the body and understands what you're doing and what you need. Videos at home are great. You know, it was great during the pandemic, but there's nothing like having someone correct you.

[39:22] Kerry Butler: No, for sure. Because I if I was doing this on my own, like I would be doing it completely wrong. You narrow in and like, no, this is the muscle you need to activate. I'm like, oh wait, what? That muscle, that muscle is not doing anything.

[39:38] Aurore Joly: Well, thank you so much for for coming on and sharing all this information with us and sharing your journey. How can people find you?

[39:47] Aurore Joly: First, thank you so much for having me. It was such a pleasure. It's always a pleasure. Uh, you can find me on Instagram. So you can find me at Move Art Studio. You can find me online uh as an artist through my uh my Instagram, Cleofest Eve, and my website or at Jolie.art. Uh and the studio it's in West Orange, New Jersey. So if you're a Broadway actor who lives in New Jersey? Come on over. Thank you so much. We'll be back with Breaking Broadway right after this message.

[40:28] Kerry Butler: Welcome back to Breaking Broadway. And now we're gonna talk to my friend Dana Steingold. Dana, you and I were in a little bit of a competition of who missed the least amount of shows of Beetlejuice. I feel like maybe you won in the end because I did take another vacation and you never took another vacation. But we're done. we didn't do it. We didn't do the competition. It's over.

[40:52] Dana Steingold: Yeah, the competition's over. But uh I just want to know how you take care of yourself doing an HO week because you also like really got through. You also were playing like Lydia, you were and constantly switching back and forth. So it's a it's it's a grind.

[41:08] Dana Steingold: It for sure is a grind. I think you know, sometimes you're gonna get sick and you can't avoid it. But I will say for me, the biggest thing is sleep um and staying on a schedule, which seems crazy, but I get up in the morning and I work out. So um that enables me to sort of make it through the week because I find that if I lay around all day and then just try to like bang out the show, my body's gonna fall apart. Um, and so is my immunity, to be honest. So uh basically I'm in bed within 45 minutes of getting home.

[41:38] Kerry Butler: Me too, which is like such an old lady thing. But yeah, I'm sure like for me, my voice, it's literally just water and sleep. There's no trick to it, I would say. And then um I do like a regular workout, like five days a week just to keep my body moving.

[41:55] Kerry Butler: What's your favorite workout?

[41:57] Dana Steingold: For me, it's soul cycle. I love a spin class. Um, I love cardio. Uh and I find that we also climb a lot of stairs during the show.

[42:08] Kerry Butler: Oh, yeah.

[42:09] Dana Steingold: Yeah, we did. But uh yeah, I'm curious to know in the end what our numbers were. I oh whether you didn't.

[42:18] Kerry Butler: I did.

[42:19] Dana Steingold: Well, when when Carrie was, I was. I didn't get sick. I had to go to the hospital too, so I got sick and I Right.

[42:25] Kerry Butler: So that's a good example. Like you couldn't have prevented it. You were you came in second at first for not missing shows.

[42:31] Dana Steingold: So I think I came to the show. I think you may be the champion.

[42:33] Kerry Butler: I may have to hand over my prize to you.

[42:35] Dana Steingold: Oh my god. Well, I will say we were joking in the office. I said to Matt Burr, I said, When Carrie Butler goes on that vacation, I win, and I'm going to take that trophy right out of her dressing room.

[42:45] Kerry Butler: Take it from our cold dead hands.

[42:47] Dana Steingold: Our cold dead hands. I know. I think in the end, I will say, I know I've only called out once. Um, and it was at the Wintergarden. I had I missed one show from calling out, but I believe in taking your vacations because I think vacations keep you in the show. You need that week. Your body needs that week. And you won't believe how tired you are.

[43:06] Kerry Butler: Yes. Yes. Yes.

[43:06] Dana Steingold: Mental. Your mind, your heart. It's like a it's more of an emotional thing than anything else. So I took my vacation at the winter garden and my vacation at the Marquee. And then I was out for COVID.

[43:16] Kerry Butler: Right.

[43:17] Dana Steingold: And we had a big debate, Matt Burr, one of our stage managers, if we should count COVID. And I said, I don't think we should unless we keep the days everybody missed the same. Because depending on when you test positive, I had to miss 13 shows, but someone else only had to miss nine. I would have performed with COVID. 100% I was fine. Literally by day five, I was like, I could do the play. You know, but they made me stay out. So which is the rule. Um, so yeah, I think in the end, I missed the 13 days for COVID and my one sick day.

[43:52] Kerry Butler: Congratulations. I will be bringing the trophy over to you. Do you want my address?

[43:57] Dana Steingold: I'll see you can mail it.

[43:59] Kerry Butler: Thank you, Dana Steingold.

[44:00] Dana Steingold: Thank you.

[44:03] Kerry Butler: Stay tuned for our next episode with Dana Steingold on Side Hustles. Thank you so much for listening. If you would like me to come to your school or theater group and give a master class or a talk back, please reach out at carriebutlercoach.com. If you like this podcast and want more episodes, please go to bpn.fm slash breaking broadway and subscribe, like, or share. Together, you and I are breaking Broadway.