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When Will Smith and his wife, Caitlin, landed jobs with the Roanoke Ballet Theatre, he thought their prayer was answered. Then COVID-19 struck and he remembered his great-grandfather.
Dan Smith
Will, Caitlin and Lucy Smith: “Being a ballet dancer feeds my soul but not my pocketbook.”
Will and Caitlin Smith got what he calls a “once in a lifetime” opportunity with the Roanoke Ballet Theatre as part of a new professional ballet company, and there was every reason to believe the couple was set for the future.
Of course, they hadn’t counted on COVID-19. And their daughter Lucy hadn’t come along, either.
Now, however, there’s little Lucy, social distancing, masks, a ballet company on indefinite hold and a couple of new—whether or not temporary—careers.
Will has become the “Dancing Lumberjack” and Caitlin has fallen back onto individual Pilates instruction. Both teach a little ballroom dancing when the opportunity arises.
The Pilates and cutting trees are not really new in the “shiny” sense. Caitlin has been learning and teaching Pilates for nearly three years, in addition to her ballet work, and Will’s lumberjacking genes go back to his grandfather.
Will, 33, and Caitlin, 31, met when they were with a ballet company in D.C., a city with a lifestyle that Will describes as “craziness.” Roanoke looked ideal when the professional ballet positions were open at what had been a school and “we could get in on the ground floor,” he says.
The new ballet group was a challenge. “The first couple years were super difficult,” says Will. “The ballet wasn’t getting support as fast as we thought it would and the company couldn’t pay us the wages we were used to in D.C., so we had to find second jobs. We both started off teaching dance, but then during the summers when my teaching would dry up, I would have to find summer work.”
Will worked at Ramulose Ridge Vinyards for a couple of summers “and loved it, but the commute made for very long days.” He got a job with the Holiday Inn as a night auditor, another “brutal schedule.” Then came an opportunity with his friend Jesse Dunker with Alpha and Omega Tree removal and landscaping. Dunker has served as a mentor for Will.
Caitlin had begun teaching Pilates on the side and loved the exciting classes with a range of men and women students. Meanwhile, Will got a job teaching ballroom dancing, but everything fell apart except the tree work with COVID-19.
“As I did more and more of [the tree work], I really began to not just enjoy it, but love it. The first time I climbed a tree, I felt that fear, that pressure. That little voice that tells you to quit was screaming in my head. I took a breath, dug deep and continued climbing, and I knew this was something I could do.”
As a theatrical guy, Will “created The Dancing lumberjack as a business [phone: 410-972-1039] and as a character. My great-grandfather was a lumberjack and he was a big, burly man. I’m a skinny ballet dancer, so I wanted to take two things that seem worlds apart and put them together.”
He has started a blog “aiming to make it about dance, trees and everything in between.” His tree work is mostly for homeowners and small businesses.
Caitlin, who has had to give up her large Pilates class for now, still teaches one-on-one. She was worried about Will climbing trees with a chain saw at first, but she finally reasoned that “the risk is about the same” as ballet, a sport where injury is nearly as common—and often as severe—as it is in football.
Will speaks for both dancers when he says, “Being a ballet dancer feeds my soul but not my pocketbook, so my goal is to work towards my arborist and climbing certification so the dancing lumberjack can feed my pocketbook.”
Meanwhile, Lucy, who was born in May, has been the beneficiary of the job juggle because she has had a virtually full-time mom and a dad who gets to spend a good bit of time with her, as well.
Will is philosophical. “With the future of the art of ballet and other performing arts looking a bit bleak [at least temporarily], I might have to make the trees my stage for now.”
The story above is from our September/October 2020 issue. For the full story subscribe today or view our FREE digital edition. Thank you for supporting local journalism!