The Queer Dance Project Provides a Safe Space for Those Kept Out of Dance

Providing a Space for Folks Shut Out of Dance

Cristina Michaels, MS L.Ac., was born to dance. Brought up outside of Manitou Springs right here in Colorado, she started getting involved with dance at age 15. At the age of 17, she moved to Seattle to enter the Pacific Northwest Ballet School. From there, she spent a summer at the prestigious Julliard. 

Next, it was off to Cornish School of the Arts in Seattle and then into a career in dance, broken up by surgeries and transfers here and there, including time with the National Ballet of Canada, making up a long and fulfilling career in dance. 

Sounds like a fairytale story with a storybook ending, right? Almost, except for a few not-so-little problems. For one thing, dancers’ careers are not long because of the wear and tear on their bodies, so she retired at 30. For another, Michaels was assigned male at birth and finally got the courage to come out and transition as an adult. As soon as she did, she was met with radio silence and zero support from the dance world. 

“I’ve asked around, and even now, after COVID, I’ve been contacting companies and schools about working with them, and I just don’t get a call back,” she explains. “So I started to realize that if I’m being left out, then my whole community is being left out. I started doing classes throughout Boulder and in Longmont, and they were such a success. I had people coming in who just wanted to be in a gender-affirming space, where the correct pronouns were used and it felt like a safe space. It started with just small, little classes, and then I started to see there was a bigger picture and more need.” 

The world of classical ballet is a very strict, and gendered, space. Built on the ideals of the patriarchy, and, of course, the French, it has not yet caught up with the more progressive ethos of other types of dance. Dancers who are socialized male versus female are taught entirely different styles and techniques, and low-income folks and plus-sized people are kept out of dance due to their perceived physical limitations or lack of access to classes. 

All of these things are reasons why Michaels held out for so long without embracing her identity, and then still struggled when she finally did come to terms with it. 

“It took me five or six years to accept it, but upon my late father’s suicide, I woke up and realizied that I didn’t want to live this lie,” she said. “I was married, and my ex wouldn’t accept it, and it just became too much to bear. I just kind of poured myself into a bottle of alcohol and just stayed there until I started to accept myself.” 

When that process of acceptance did finally begin, it was slow and painful, but ultimately successful, and Michaels has her community to thank for it.

“I want to literally take my hat off and give a huge bow and curtsey to Out Boulder,” she says. “They had a gender support group, and I went there and realized I wasn’t alone. I had a lot of support, but it was a slow, methodical process. I was nearly homeless about four times, and I was living on pantry food for two-and-a-half years, until someone at Out Boulder told me to contact Boulder County for food assistance. I got $100 to spend, and I was so grateful; I couldn’t believe it.”

“…I had to recognize my four enemies. My four enemies were toxic masculinity, toxic femininity, my own community, and then my own self.”

Slowly but surely, she began to regain control over her life, but it was still painfully obvious how gendered ballet opportunities are. Most retired dancers become teachers, but Michaels kept hearing “no” or complete silence from studios. So, she switched gears and started working on a license to practice acupuncture, but the lack of inclusion in dance spaces still bothered her. 

“It really came down to the fact that I wasn’t being included in dance studios, and I went, ‘Wait a second; there is a huge problem here.’ I would run into people who would be like, ‘Oh, I loved to dance until I got body shamed, or until they didn’t like a certain thing.’ It’s very discriminatory. So I started to think, ‘Wait a second, these people love to dance. And they don’t get to anymore.’ So I liquidated some of my retirement and created Queer Dance Project.”

Created entirely as a passion project born out of the desire for a safe space to dance, Michaels opened her dance studio in the same space as her acupuncture studio, outfitting the waiting room with a dance-ready floor and barre, but no mirror, so that dysphoria and dysmorphia couldn’t ruin the experience for prospective dancers. The space is ADA-compliant, and though it is for everyone, the emphasis is on providing a space where queer folks can dance without judgment. 

The process wasn’t easy, but she was determined to make it work.

“First of all, I had to recognize my four enemies. My four enemies were toxic masculinity, toxic femininity, my own community, and then my own self. And once I did that, it all started to come together. This one person introduced me to their wife, who is a Polynesian dancer, and things started to take off. I started to reach out to the queer community that danced, saying, ‘Hey, listen, this studio is going to happen. Would you be interested in teaching?’ 

Now, the Queer Dance Project provides a space where dancers can be themselves and live out their fantasies. When I first stepped foot inside the studio, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was met with a helpful, uplifting environment. Michaels knows all the rules when it comes to ballet, and therefore she can break them, happily teaching both male and female technique to the queer folks in her class eager to throw out gender roles. And her corrections come with special attention to individual bodies, their injuries and triumphs, and their history in the dance space. 

“I’d like to see this project as a model of hope for individuals, and a sign of hope for the community, particularly the trans community. It’s hard to run a small business and be trans, so it would be nice if we’re seen as a beacon of hope for the community.” 

Visit queerdanceproject.com for classes and information about getting involved. 

Photos by Julius Garrido for OFM