Maine news, sports, weather from Waterville Morning Sentinel

'In love with dance'

Morning Sentinel Staff

Maybe you don't remember Ryan Jolicoeur-Nye, or, maybe, you never heard the tale of the kid from Waterville's North End, the one who gave up football to become a ballet dancer.

Jolicoeur-Nye is always happy to share the story, and he isn't one to pretty up the past.

He'll tell you that he flunked almost every class he took as a high school freshman.

He might have ended up a dropout, although he might have straightened up to maintain his eligibility to play football.

But Jolicoeur-Nye, 23, never returned to the football field. He traded his shoulder pads for tights and dancing shoes, becoming a part of the Bossov Ballet Theatre.

Nine years later he is still dancing, a member of Ballet Idaho, a professional artist who has performed with some of the top companies and choreographers in the world.

Jolicoeur-Nye is the first to say it's an improbable story.

"I didn't even know that boys did ballet," he said. "I didn't even know we had ballet in Maine."

Jolicoeur-Nye compares himself to "Billy Elliot," the movie about the kid from a working-class northern England family who gives up boxing to pursue ballet.

"Billy Elliot" came out in 2000, the same year Jolicoeur-Nye began his ascent in the ballet world.

And now, four years into his professional career, Jolicoeur-Nye is coming to terms with his dancing mortality. He suffers from an arthritic big toe on his right foot -- one he said might require a total joint replacement eventually. He figures he can dance two more years before pain or surgery forces him to stop.

"The problem," he said, "is because I started so late, I had a lot of training in a short period and by doing that you skip a lot of steps, and as a result, it takes a toll on your bones."

Jolicoeur-Nye, though, has no regrets. Dancing, he said, taught him discipline and motivated him to do well in school so that he could transfer to Maine Central Institute in Pittsfield, where Bossov Ballet Theatre is based.

The transition from a tough, football-playing North End kid to a poised ballet dancer had its rough stretches. Jolicoeur-Nye said he lost some friends and he kept the dancing secret for a while.

Jolicoeur-Nye said his father did not support his dancing at first either and strongly opposed his decision to move to Canada at 16 to become a boarding student at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet.

In time, though, Jolicoeur-Nye said his father came to terms with his dance career and even attended his lead performance in the ballet "Don Quixote" in summer 2007 at Waterville Opera House.

Jolicoeur-Nye said he would love to stay in the dance world as a choreographer once his days as a performer are over.

But if that doesn't work out, he said he would be content to get a regular job -- maybe become a firefighter -- and settle down, buy a house and start a family.

And yet whatever his future, Jolicoeur-Nye said dancing will always be dear to him, an experience and a form of expression that helped him become the person he was meant to be.

"It unlocked something I didn't realize that I had -- something hidden inside me," he said. "It brought it out, and, suddenly, I was in love with dance."

Colin Hickey is an English teacher for RSU 18.