Timothee Chalamet said no one cares about ballet anymore. Fran Veyette disagrees.

He's back on #NoThirds, and this episode goes deep into one of the most debated questions in the ballet world right now: are the classical, full-length ballets still relevant? Swan Lake. Giselle. Sleeping Beauty. Romeo and Juliet. These are the stories that have filled theaters for over a century. But in a world where audiences have shorter attention spans and higher expectations, do they still have something to say?

Fran, a former principal dancer, choreographer, and rehearsal director who has actually danced these roles, makes a passionate and detailed case for why these ballets are not just beautiful spectacles but stories with real symbolic depth. Giselle is not a ghost story. It is about forgiveness and redemption. Sleeping Beauty is not about a princess being rescued. It is about the danger of naivete and what it means to wake up to the world. Romeo and Juliet is not a love story. It is a story about the consequences of your actions. Swan Lake is not just about swans. It is about captivity, tyranny, and the power of choosing your own path.

Fran has built backstories for these characters, wrestled with their motivations on stage, and performed them in front of thousands of people. The way he talks about them may make you see these ballets differently the next time you sit in a theater.

We also dig into the bigger industry debate around classical ballet programming, new works, ticket sales, and what audiences actually want. Not everyone agrees, and this conversation does not pretend otherwise. These stories can be timeless in their symbolism and still feel out of step to a contemporary audience. Both things can be true.

Fran's take is but one point of view, and we know there are lots of opinions out there. That is exactly what makes this conversation worth having. We would love to hear where you land on this. Find us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok at Ballet Help Desk, or leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts.

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How long can your dancer stay home before it starts to matter? It's one of the most common questions ballet parents face, and one of the most consequential. Jen Sommers, Director of Houston Ballet Academy, joins us to talk through exactly that, along with everything else families need to understand about the road from pre-professional training to a professional dance career.

Jen is refreshingly direct about how much a company-affiliated environment matters, and it goes well beyond technique. We talk about what dancers gain from being adjacent to a professional company every day, from learning to pick up repertoire quickly and navigate casting to understanding what it actually feels like to be a working company member before they ever sign a contract. Pas de deux training, performance volume, and learning to function as part of an ensemble are all pieces that are hard to replicate outside of that environment. She doesn't sugarcoat where the gaps tend to show up when dancers arrive later than they should have, and she gets honest about how often dancers coming from local or regional programs actually end up in HB2 and what that picture really looks like.

We also get into how HBA is structured from its youngest students all the way through HB2, what short-term stays are and what they mean for families navigating the admissions process, and what the pipeline from Pro 2 to HB2 to company really looks like.

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Author, teacher, and former principal dancer Gavin Larsen has spent her post-performance life doing something she loves just as much as dancing: drawing stories out of other people. Her new book, Infinite Steps: 33 Dancers and Their Lives in Ballet, grew out of a collaboration with longtime ABT staff photographer Gene Schiavone, who wanted the dancers behind his archive of images to be truly known, not just catalogued.

In this conversation, Gavin sits down with us to talk about what surprised her while interviewing 33 dancers across generations and companies, why she thinks the Plan B conversation puts unfair pressure on students, and what she believes is the real cost of a ballet career that doesn't get talked about nearly enough. Hint: it's not the blisters.

She also shares her take on the job market then versus now, what parents consistently get wrong, and why she finds it genuinely hopeful that kids keep walking into plain rooms, leaving their phones outside, and putting their ballet shoes on.

Infinite Steps is available now wherever books are sold.

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What does it really take to go from pre-professional student to professional ballet dancer? Charlotte Junge, a company member with Madison Ballet, shares the unfiltered version of her journey from competition dance roots in Houston to training at Boston Ballet School through the height of COVID, to landing her contract via an Instagram DM from Artistic Director Ja' Malik.

But the conversation doesn't stop at the audition story. Charlotte gets refreshingly honest about the financial realities of dancing at a smaller non-union company, the side jobs it takes to make rent, and the performance anxiety that caught her completely off guard once she turned professional. She also talks about how becoming a certified Pilates instructor gave her a second career path, a deeper understanding of her own body, and something she didn't expect: a sense of identity outside the studio.

Charlotte's story is a masterclass in resilience, self-awareness, and figuring it out one season at a time.

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Madison Ballet's Ja'Malik didn't arrive to tinker around the edges. He came to change things, and four years in, it's working.

He shares a journey that started with Michael Jackson's Thriller in his front yard and led him through the Joffrey Ballet School, the Ailey school, and North Carolina Dance Theater before landing him in the director's chair in Wisconsin. He talks about what it was like to grow up in ballet without seeing anyone who looked like him on stage, what finally changed that, and why he's determined to make sure the next generation doesn't have the same experience.

We also dig into the harder stuff: the culture of fear in the studio, what it means to actually lead with mental health in mind rather than just put it on a poster, the very real challenge of getting boys through the door, and why ballet companies cannot survive on the same loyal audience forever. Oh, and he's also running the school, the marketing, and the development. The man does not sleep.

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In the final episode of our four-part bullying series, we're joined again by Kelsey Fyffe, a therapist who works with pre-professional dancers, and Suzette Takei, a veteran academic school administrator and educator, as we get into the messy stuff. Lobby politics, ballet parents behaving badly, peer conflict between students, nepotism at the dance studio, and yes, that one kid who thinks the entire barre belongs to her. We also tackle some bigger questions: how do you know when a ballet training environment has turned toxic? What do you do when your dancer is being bullied by a classmate, a teacher's pet, or even another parent? And what does any of this have to do with your own stress and mental health? The conversation we didn't expect to have and couldn't stop having was about you, the ballet parent, and the stress that quietly leaks onto everyone around you without you even realizing it. If you're new here, start with Parts 1 through 3 first as this series builds on itself.

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What does it actually feel like to train at the Vaganova Academy, the school that produced some of the greatest dancers in history, and then go on to perform at one of Russia's most storied companies? Elena Kunikova has lived that story, and she's generous enough to share it.

In this episode, we talk about what serious Vaganova method training actually looks like from the inside, why character dance matters more than most ballet training programs realize, and how the pandemic turned her into one of the most sought-after online ballet coaches working today. We also get into the questions ballet parents of pre-professional dancers tend to lose sleep over: when to start thinking about a professional path, whether early specialization in one style helps or hurts, and what it actually means to teach a student how to work.

Elena has been in ballet for, as she puts it, about 300 years. She has the stories to prove it.

Interested in working with Elena? Learn more here.

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In part three of our bullying series, we tackle some of the toughest conversations ballet parents face: what to do when teachers make harmful comments about weight, body image, or use abusive language in class. Psychotherapist Kelsey Fyffe and educator Suzette Takei give parents the exact roadmap for addressing these issues at ballet schools and pre-professional programs.

Kelsey, who specializes in eating disorders and works with Houston Ballet Academy, explains why pre-professional students should never be put on diets, what questions to ask about a studio's approach to body image, and how to tell the difference between giving corrections and promoting disordered eating. She shares specific language for approaching ballet teachers and administrators, starting with curiosity instead of accusations.

We dig into the real fears ballet parents have about speaking up. Will your kid get blackballed from summer intensives or trainee programs? How do you know when to stay and when to run? Suzette and Kelsey walk through scenarios and discuss cultural and generational differences that can complicate conversations with non-native English speaking faculty.

The episode covers handling abusive language from ballet instructors, including when teachers single out students in class. We talk about how bystander parents can step in even when it's not their kid being targeted, how to teach young dancers to set boundaries around body comments, and why building supportive lobby culture matters. Suzette and Kelsey also address why anxious, perfectionistic ballet students struggle to speak up and how therapy can help dancers build their mental toolkit before problems escalate.

If you've ever felt paralyzed about confronting a problem at your ballet studio or pre-professional program, this episode gives you the questions to ask and the confidence to advocate for your child's physical and mental health.

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