Check Out Christina Lindhout’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Christina Lindhout

Hi Christina, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I was born in Mansfield, Ohio, and fell in love with dance when I was three years old. I wasn’t good at first! But through a lot of tears, injuries, pep talks from my amazing mom, and too many late-night practice sessions in our family’s garage to count, I crawled my way into the “she might have a future at this” category of young dancers. Throughout middle school and high school, I was lucky enough to train with some of the best ballet schools in the country, such as American Ballet Theatre, Joffrey Ballet, Orlando Ballet, and BalletMet. I was also lucky to have incredible dance training and mentors in our small-town Ohio home through Ashland Regional Ballet.

At 17 I began dancing professionally, a dream I had been chasing since before I could remember. When I got the call that I had landed a job I literally almost threw up I was so excited. I was overjoyed that my dream had come true. Then, at age 18, I accepted a contract with Ohio Contemporary Ballet that landed me here in Cleveland, Ohio. While with the company I had the opportunity to dance principal roles both locally and internationally, including dancing lead roles in Havana, Cuba and Taipei, Taiwan. I was being pushed as a dancer and as an artist. It was truly my dream job. At 19, I fell in love with teaching while working with my adult ballet students at the Ohio Contemporary Ballet Academy who were aged 14-82 (!!), and showed me that it’s never too late to be a beginner at something! Students I met through teaching here are some of my closest friends to this day!

In 2020, I fell in love with choreographing and directing through the creation of a project called “FEAST: a ballet,” which I got to create with some amazing friends and collaborators across a multitude of genres. Visual artist Corrie Slawson, one of my adult dance students and friends, invited me to work on the project as a continuation of her sculptural work, which we included in the performance. I will never forget how empowering it was to tell a story that I personally cared about and felt was important for audiences to see, not just a story that was dictated to me by another choreographer’s vision. To date, “FEAST” has been the recipient of awards all over the world. It was around this same time that I accepted an adjunct teaching position at Baldwin Wallace University and stepped away from dancing as part of a company. It was terrifying to embrace freelancing as a dancer and choreographer, especially during the uncertainty of a global pandemic! Thankfully, I had friends, family, and mentors to help me navigate it all and hold me when I cried (which was relatively often).

Now, six years later, I am a full-time member of the dance faculty at BW as an Assistant Professor, and I have the honor of choreographing and creating my professional and collegiate-level dance works with some of the most amazing human beings and artists I have ever met in one of the most incredible communities I have ever been a part of. With the support and love of friends, family, and the Cleveland community, I have had choreography selected to be performed at Playhouse Square, Cleveland Public Theatre, Ohio Contemporary Ballet, Baldwin Wallace University, Cuyahoga County Community College, for the Brain Injury Association of Ohio, and as an official selection of the CAN Triennial. I have also been the recipient of a 2020 Akron Soul Train Fellowship, a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for Choreography, as well as the Summit Artspace Arts Alive Award as the 2023 Outstanding Artist in Dance.
I’m so unbelievably grateful that the universe made me a Clevelander all those years ago. Without the support of this incredible community, I can honestly say I probably wouldn’t be dancing. Nowhere else have I ever seen such a strong network of artists and art-lovers, and for that we are unbelievably fortunate.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
My road has been bumpier and more twisted than my younger self could have ever imagined! As a young dancer in training, I always imagined my professional dance life to be linear, progressive, and clear. In reality (as any artist will loudly tell you), the path has been anything but.

In my early 20’s, I was almost fired from my job with a professional company because of my weight. I was deemed by directors and choreographers as “too big” and had (like many of my colleagues) been on the receiving end of several “fat talks.” This led to an all-consuming cycle of anorexia and binge eating. I lost critical bone density, was constantly injured, obsessively counted calories, could barely look in a mirror, and questioned my self-worth every day. It was terrifying to think that I could lose my income, stability, and a job that I loved because of my perceived size. I felt like my body had betrayed me. After two years of this painful cycle and with no concrete plan of what to do next, I stepped away from my position with the company that I loved so much.

Later that same year, the universe steered me toward (aka crashed me into) the opportunity to choreograph and direct my first full-length work and the chance to take a teaching position at Baldwin Wallace University. Both of these wild and unexpected turns saved me. Being in positions of leadership, both while choreographing and while teaching, gave me my confidence back. I slowly fell back in love with dance, and realized that I had the opportunity to be a different kind of leader in the dance world if I chose to be. Whether directing and choreographing alongside my peers or teaching the next generation of incredible artists, I hope to foster a new brand of leadership in this industry- an empathetic leadership that gives artists agency over their own bodies, their salaries, and the kind of work they wish to elevate in the world using their unique talents and voices.

The path remains foggy and nonlinear. Being a twenty-something female in academia with over 25 years of experience in my field, but without any college degrees to show for it certainly comes with its own unique set of challenges! But what I trust more than anything is that the most beautiful moments in any artistic journey are the plot twists we don’t see coming. I am lucky to get to navigate this crazy road with the wonderful people I have met along the way, and I am forever grateful to learn from them.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
As a choreographer, my work has developed as a response to the culture of traditional classical ballet: predominantly on the physical and mental expectations placed on classical ballet artists, and the outdated and often harmful aesthetic values of the style. My movement style focuses on a subversion of classical ballet in combination with contemporary and modern dance with an emphasis on musicality, as well as honest and relatable storytelling from a well-informed and compassionate point of view. This level of vulnerability serves to connect viewers to the movement and to the performers, in addition to fostering connection between the performers and the movement itself. I never want anyone to leave a performance of my work feeling that they “don’t get dance,” or that dance is only meant to be understood by an elite few. My movement strives to “meet audiences where they are,” creating works where there is understanding and empathy to be found at every level of viewership. I want audiences to feel that my work was made generously for them.

The “ballet world” is not often very accepting of viewpoints and cultural shifts that differ from precedents that have lingered since the mid-19th century: it is important to be joyful but not loud, boisterous, or silly, and to be vulnerable but not ugly or “too real.” Most classical story ballets feature physically small, cisgender, heterosexual, white women who lack agency and who wait for a cisgender, heterosexual, white man to intervene. Dance performance is too often limited by these outdated (and often harmful) constructs. I strive to create innovative work that breaks down these barriers and showcases contemporary dance as a powerful and relevant vehicle for communication, connectedness, joy, and change.

Most recently, I am very proud of a piece I choreographed called “snack.” ‘snack,’ which first premiered in 2022, was created with a team of amazing artists and friends of mine who all united around the idea of gig work, especially as artists. We made this piece about the struggles of American gig workers (rideshare drivers, bartenders, adjunct faculty members, artists, and the like), how unjust gig work is, and how it takes far more from workers than it gives. The piece was called “snack” because of how similar a gig is to a snack: a small morsel, never intended to fully satisfy, and only enough to get you from one to the next. The work showcased how gig workers make their livings off of “snacks,” always waiting for a full meal that almost never comes. It meant so much to me to create a work that spoke so directly to the struggles and experiences of myself and the people I care about.

How do you define success?
My relationship with success is a complicated one. As a young dancer and performer, I spent years measuring myself and my success based on what others thought of me. When you are a professional dancer, it is all too easy-albeit understandable- to fall into this trap. Your casting opportunities, job security, and entire livelihood are all directly correlated to what artistic directors, choreographers, coaches, critics, teachers, and audiences think of you. This includes their opinions on your technique, movement style, personality (both onstage and in rehearsal), your weight, body type, hair color, even the way your foot arches when you point it. It can be exhausting and demoralizing to have so much control taken from you at every stage of your career, no matter how established you are in your field.

For several years now, I have been striving to replace my ideas of “success” with “fulfillment”. For too long, “success” could be taken away from me with one bad casting in a performance, one bad job review with a director, or one conversation with a choreographer about how my body was “too big.” Now, my success is predicated on my feelings of fulfillment; an inner knowledge that I am doing exactly what I was put on this earth to do.

As a teacher and professor, fulfillment is seeing my students experience the joy of dance and believing in themselves as they try things that scare them. As a dancer, choreographer, and director, fulfillment is knowing that I am doing everything I can, no matter how small, to bring concert dance into mainstream culture, deconstruct its (at times) elitist facade, and change the culture of leadership in dance. Fulfillment is every time I stand in awe at how dance connects people to something bigger than themselves. I find that too often people say they have to heal from what their dance experiences have done to them (myself included). For me, fulfillment and success is using dance as the thing that heals and creates joy. By focusing on fulfillment, I am able to take my power and agency back in an industry that so often succeeds in taking it away from us.

Pricing:

• Private lessons in Ballet, Pointe, Contemporary, Modern, Jazz, or tap (ALL LEVELS- beginners welcome!): Inquire for Pricing
• Personal Training Session: Inquire for Pricing
• Solo or Group choreography (for Auditions or Competitions): Inquire for Pricing
• Wedding first dance choreography and lessons: Inquire for Pricing

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.christinalindhout.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christina_lindhout/?hl=en