STORY BY KAREN BOSSICK

PHOTOS Courtesy of BALLET SUN VALLEY AND KAREN BOSSICK

Isabella Boylston had just basked in repeat curtain calls following her second Ballet Sun Valley Festival, despite having to deal with a stomach bug. And she was enmeshed in presenting a day’s worth of free ballet classes to 140 aspiring dancers from as far away as Canada and India.

But there was one more mountain she had to scale before leaving her hometown of Sun Valley to head back to New York where she is a principal dancer for American Ballet Theatre.

“I love to hike and I’d have to say that Alice Lake and Sawtooth Lake are a couple of my favorite hikes,” she told more than 160 youngsters and their parents gathered at Ketchum’s Limelight Hotel Thursday morning.

“Last year I tried to do Goat Lake but it turned dangerous so I got scared,” she added, referring to an alpine lake in the Sawtooth Mountains that features a scree-covered scramble next to a waterfall. “But this year I will conquer Goat Lake!”

Boylston, who started her illustrious career as a 3-year-old dancing with Hilarie Neely’s Footlite Dance Centre in Hailey, spent an hour fielding questions from emcee Kate Weihe who organized Day for Dance Education, and the young dancers.

About 140 young dancers took advantage of the classes taught by the dancers who had performed in the Sun Valley Pavilion on Tuesday and Wednesday. About 55 percent of the dancers came from the Wood River Valley. Others came from places like Boise, Connecticut, Kansas, Utah, Texas, Florida, New Jersey and Minnesota.

Boylston, who was accompanied by her parents, appeared in a T-shirt that said “Isabella, Isapizza, Mozzarella,” denim cutoffs and high-heel sandals, her long straight brown hair falling nearly to her waist. She wore a big smile—a byproduct, she said, of what had been “such an emotional three days.”

“Of all the achievements I’m proudest of, it’s probably Ballet Sun Valley,” she said of the festival she instigated a few years ago with the help of Sun Valley residents Robert Smelick, Dan Drackett and Jim Laski.

Boylston described how she developed a love of dancing early on, begging her parents to let her attend boarding school when it became difficult to keep up with both academics and dancing, given the two-hour bus commute to ballet class that she faced in Boulder during ninth grade.

Her mother was reluctant at first, pushing academics over ballet. But eventually her parents came around. And she found herself rooming with “tiny little Mississippi girl” with the biggest forehead she’d ever seen.

“Now, she’s like a super model, but she was so funny looking then” she said of Lauren Post, an American Ballet Theatre dancer who took part in the ensemble “In Creases” piece on Wednesday night.

The two spent every moment together –so much so that they passed letters to each other in the hallway between classes.

“It’s amazing we ended up in American Ballet Theatre together—that was our dream,” Boylston said.

Injuries are among the challenges that dancers face, given the athletic demands of dancing, said Boylston, who has fought through tendonitis. To wit, she added, her friend Lauren Post had suffered a  full ACL blowup on stage but had had surgery and is now stronger than ever.

“So it’s a happy ending,” Boylston said.

It’s important to not let it injuries or bad reviews shake your confidence, she added.

“Every single person has heard the word, ‘No.’ It’s what you do with that rejection that determines your future,” she said. “Have a mantra to come back to. Mine is, ‘Always keep improving.’ ”

Boylston related how a handful of the dancers in the Festival had performed Tuesday and Wednesday  despite severe stomach distress. She herself started feeling nauseous just as she finished her first solo on Tuesday night and had to run off stage where she threw up. She performed a second solo in which she was supposed to stay on stage but again had to make a fast retreat. Her stage Mom had to push he back out on stage for the curtsies.

“I thought it was altitude sickness. But there was a bug going around,” she said. “Dancers are the toughest people in the world,” she added.

Boylston said she fights stress by hiking when in Sun Valley and having a circle of great friends and family.

Boylston also advised the youngsters to seek out older mentors. Hers, she said was Russian Ballerina Diana Vishneva, a principal dancer with the Marinsky Ballet who joined the American Ballet Theatre as principal dancer from 2005 to 2017.

Boylston watched a videocassette of Vishneva that was in Japanese as a youngster and her mother surprised her with a trip to New York to see the ballerina when she was 13. And one day she found herself on stage dancing with her.

 “She helped me with my first ‘Swan Lake,’” said Boylston. “She’s someone I can call about anything.”

Other mentors have included former coach Susan Jaffe, once described as “America’s quintessential American ballerina,” and Irina Kolpakova, a Russian ballerina who worked for several seasons as choreographer and coach at the American Ballet Theatre.

“I wanted to be her,” Boylston said, recounting how Kolpakova—now 85—put her and Misty Copeland through the paces every day. “It’s really cool when you’re communicating with dancers from the past.”

Boylston encouraged the girls to focus on what they can do well, not on what they can’t do well.

“If I were a director—well, I am a director,” she corrected herself, “I wouldn’t want 15 dancers on stage that all look the same. Think about the things that make you unique and focus on that. As long as you keep improving, you have nothing to worry about.”

Boylston told the youngsters that she dances five to six days a week. She can spend up to 10 hours a day dancing when rehearsing but seven-hour days are more typical.

Her go-to-foods are pasta and salad.

“I would never eat a fad diet. I don’t think that’s a wise choice for an athlete. Everything balanced and in moderation,” she said.

When in Sun Valley she added, she heads to Perry’s Restaurant for the breakfasts and turkey sandwiches.

“And definitely the chocolate chip cookies. I know I told you I don’t eat sugar, but there’s no sugar in those cookies,” she added.

Boylston acknowledged that there are a few prima donnas that can be difficult to get along with in a  business where camaraderie is of utmost importance.

“I always try to kill them with kindness. Even if they’re not going to be very nice to me, I make them be nice to me,” she said.

And what about Ballet Sun Valley?

“I’d love to grow it and put out more shows,” she said. “It’s an enormous undertaking. I wish I could incorporate some sort of residency here, a workshop where we could be here for a couple weeks.”

She’s already got her first dance picked out for a third Ballet Sun Valley Festival—a James Whiteside piece performed in cut-offs and tennis shoes that got a roar out of the audience at the 2017 Ballet Sun Valley Festival and did so again on Wednesday night.

“Next year I’m going to do ‘Wallflower!,’ “ she said.