Finding Feet in Liminal Life with artist Shelby Elsbree

Photographer Karolina Kuras, in collaboration with Louiza Babouryan (dress) and Fjord Review (sponsor)

Jai-Dee Dancewear is a sustainable leotard company celebrating the beauty, wisdom and value of women who dance. Our blog serves to inform, inspire and connect our community of socially conscious women in ballet and beyond. All hearts are welcome here.


When I received my first contract as a professional dancer, the self-doubt lurking in my viscera took a short vacation. The possibility of making it gave me a blissful break from my own negative narrative. But stressors (some real, some imagined) soon ushered that insecurity right back into my body. It wasn’t until I turned towards the work waiting for me on the inside that I could loosen my anxious grip on goals, destinations and external validation. With practice (and plenty of setbacks), my life today centers far less around arriving and much more around becoming.

While our current culture still pulls us towards linear living with what feels like a forceful tug, there are many creative communities stepping off ladders and rewilding hearts. By developing a community with which we can each lean on and stumble with, it seems to be we, as a society, can embrace the concept of finding feet in liminal life*.

One artist helping light the way is the lovely Shelby Elsbree. Shelby is an artist, arts advocate, writer and former professional dancer whose beautiful work I got to know through our shared history with Boston Ballet. Her creative writing home, Tutus & Tea is a stunning display of living inquiry and art. You’ll want to bookmark her site and visit it often (bring a warm cup of tea and an urushed heart).

Today on our blog, Shelby explores how our past, present and future selves co-create our wholeness. She examines how insight and opportunity emerge when we walk boldly into the disorienting phases and transitions of life. She reminds us that what is most meaningful is often not instantly visible (nor instagrammable…)

This work originally posted on Tutus & Tea last July when we were all much (much) warmer. Enjoy words and photography that promise to slow you down and thaw you out.

With heart,

Sustainable leotards empowering women through ecofriendly clothing.


*Liminal, stemming from the latin root limen, means “threshold.” The liminal space is the crossing over space – a place where one has left something behind yet not fully into something else.


{Hello? It’s me.}

Longing for reasons good enough to return to this sweet space but weak in the face of every distraction to put it off…(is anyone else binging Suits because #MeghanMarkle? Shameless, I admit). Let’s face it, in this social world we live in, we feel the need to filter and fragment every waking moment before deeming it ‘like-worthy’ enough to share and I’m both a victim and a contributor towards the millennial trend. Anyways, I’ve been hiding in here…


…looking for followers. JK 😉

It’s 95˚outside and inspired by solo-museum ventures and reflective walks in the shade, I decided today was the day I’d treat myself to a ‘flash-chilled’ ice coffee to-stay thank you, and a thought-cleanse on this here *carefully-curated* corner of my internet legacy.

To be honest, much of my reservations to keep Tutus&Tea alive and well post-dance-career have centered around transitional doubts that I would have relevant things to say anymore — specifically to a dancer/family audience (hi momma) …but who am I kidding? I always have something to say and for every time that’s gotten me in trouble, it has gotten me twice the amount of opportunity. De rien mes amis.


So, I challenge you to take a seat and stay a while…let’s have a chat 🙂

Has anyone noticed that people’s Instagram captions have turned into mini-blog posts? I read an article that suggested this fit the needs of our dwindling attention spans* which made me sad & left me with two questions:

1. Does this mean people don’t have time for blogs anymore (not to mention articles/books for goodness sake)?! slash If I EVER get back to Tutus&Tea with inspiring content, will people even take the 5/10 minutes to read it…or are they just here for the breathtaking photography & poems ;)…?! (*disclaimer: this miiight have contributed to my procrastination, I place applicable blame here)

…and 2. If Instagram captions are all people have time for, WHAT NEXT? Will iGen be reading blurred news off sidewalk chalk whilst fighting automated-hoverboard traffic? I digress…

Yesterday after yoga, I put on some lipstick and took myself out to the Newseum here in Washington, D.C. If you haven’t been, you’re in for an emotional melting pot of American journalism history that will actually break your heart wide open. The ‘Picture Of the Year’ exhibit gathers 75 years of Pulitzer Prize winning photographs graphic and gripping enough to send you running for the “First Dogs: American Presidents and Their Pets” gallery 4 floors down (we miss you Bo & Sunny) — but not before you take a moment to fight back tears and ruminate over the ol’ “…a picture is worth a thousand words” adage that, in this case of surreal photo journalism, is more like “…a picture is worth our understanding of freedom & captivity, beauty & tragedy, happiness & despair, love & hate and virtually every other conceptual and emotional binary humans have the capacity to experience.” Byeee water weight.

This got me thinking back on that idea of our depreciating attention-spans and time for anything not immediately self-serving. It would be one thing if the content we consumed (inhaled more-like) came from award-winning photo journalists who have risked their lives to show us what reality looks like in a sadly “post-fact” world of news and global goings-on. In that case, we’d hardly need captions at all because words in the face of literal breath-taking captures are gross understatements…but this isn’t the case. Rather, we have the blessing (curse?) of catering our daily ‘feeds’ and followings to content that is relevant to our social circles, our passions, what we wear, write, tweet, re-post, etc…

This summer, I’m interning for a team of rockstars at GiveCampus— writing and familiarizing myself with WeWork perks and professional mentorship I could only have dreamed of before arriving here in person. Perhaps navigating a new work environment and spending a season in our Nation’s capital is rubbing off on me…I catch myself seeing things through a professional/political lens whether I want to or not—it can feel disconcerting… but on the off-hour, I recognize this as just another opportunity to embrace the foreign feelings of life transition.

On a recent morning commute, I tuned in to my fave Podcast by HRH Oprah and came across this gem of a thought to think: It seems that at nearly every point in our lives, we’re experiencing some form of a transition – whether personal, professional, physical, emotional, or spiritual…transitions don’t really come to an end, they shift into a different season or chapter of your life and manifest themselves in the people, places and things that make us who we are. Before we know it, we’re facing a new transition usually without clear resolution of the old one — perspectives shift, focus changes, thoughts reframe.

This idea #shook (forgive) me in a BIG way. Here I’ve been, spending the last two years (!!) “transitioning” from my life as a dancer to my life as a student/“retired dancer” (ugh), waiting for some obvious moment when I might feel officially “transitioned.” I’ve thought a lot about what this moment might look like as I hold fast to my calf muscles and stress dream about forgotten choreography: It usually vacillates somewhere between me graduating from Columbia, speaking publicly on behalf of my passions/experiences while holding audiences in rapt attention via clever, intellectual rhetoric (or a kick-a** Vinyasa Flow sequence) …..AND pinpointing my life’s purpose while writing a book, taking a global-trek, or getting swept off my feet by an eligible Royal on a blind-date (kidding (not kidding)).

{switches crossed legs, ahem ankles*}

Ironically whilst escaping the heat this afternoon, I came across a poignant blog post written by former Principal ballerina/current Artistic Director of Washington Ballet, Julie Kent.

“On the Labor and Reward of Becoming a Ballerina,” she wrote:

Working hard, being disciplined and focused, loving what you do—all these things that are a natural part of being a dancer—will equip you with the tools to make a contribution to the world and be successful. Do you want to dance? At the end of the day, that’s what it is. Get to the heart of what your work as a dancer means to you and then start pursuing it.”

Unsurprisingly, this struck all the cords as I sat there contemplating my life’s current, less-choreographed path…Pursuing something I’m passionate about, something impactful and fulfilling — these are all the reasons I gave my life to a sacrificial art-form like dance in the first place. All the reasons I wonder if I should go back and lace up my ballerina boots…

…the meaning of my work as a dancer… the reward of becoming a ballerina…

These now obvious concepts have nothing to do with what I gave (or could still give) to dance and everything to do with what dancing gave to me. While finding ‘meaning’ beyond the barre and world’s stages has proven to be quite the challenge, I’m now seeing my current transition to be more and more of a creative impetus into the next one.

Re-reading Julie’s post, I realized the harder I try to get to the heart of this meaning, to make a contribution to the world and be successful, the more I find my work has only just begun…and I can’t help but wonder if breezing by a filtered photo or a witty caption would have inspired this same level of reflection.

If you’ve made it down here to the bottom of this thought train, the light in me bows to the light in you 🙂

Stay tuned for recently discovered Trader Joe snacks, #InternshipMusings, and deep thoughts on family roots >> see what I did there.

Now, back to Suits.

xx, S
p.s. I welcome your thoughts with arms in 2nd position — dog days of summer are upon us and we need all the refreshing sips & shares we can get 😉

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