Kathleen McGuire Gaines’ career in ballet appeared to be heading in the right direction. She studied in the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School’s pre-professional program and did well in San Francisco Ballet’s competitive training environment. 

And then she quit. 

“Long story short, I stopped dancing because of untreated depression,” she says. “This is not something I realized at the time, or frankly for many years, because depression and mental health in general wasn’t something that was discussed a lot in the studio. I just figured I wasn’t tough enough.” 

In 2017 — more than a decade after she put away her pointe shoes — she penned a piece for Dance Magazine titled “Why are we still so bad at addressing dancers’ mental health?” In it, she shared her story, and it went viral online overnight, she recalls. 

“In a way, I found it comforting because I wasn’t alone, but it was equally upsetting because I don’t really want that much company in that experience,” she says. “After that, dancers and mental health professionals from all over the world started reaching out to me, sharing their stories.”

Ms. Gaines has since turned those stories and her own experiences into Minding the Gap, a Pittsburgh-based social good startup that’s on a mission “to see mental health treated with the same seriousness as physical health in dance culture,” according to her website. On Sunday, it will hold its first dancer wellness fair in Point Park University’s George Rowland White Performance Center, Downtown. The daylong event will feature a mindful meditation session with celebrated former American Ballet Theatre principal Susan Jaffe, yoga, an introduction to Gyrokinesis, mental health resources and free physical therapy screenings with UPMC Sports Medicine, among other activities. 

In late 2018, Ms. Gaines left her job as the director of development for the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy to grow Minding the Gap full time. The nonprofit operates out of the Ascender coworking space in East Liberty, where it’s part of its incubator program. She manages the daily tasks and long-term goals, with advisory support from Brian T. Goonan, a clinical psychologist in private practice in Houston, and Leigh A. Skvarla, a Pittsburgh-based national certified counselor and performance consultant. For research input, Ms. Gaines consults with Liliana Araújo, a psychologist, lecturer and researcher in performance psychology at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music & Dance in London. 

So why can dance be so detrimental to a person’s mental health? 

“There are some inherit risks to being involved in this art form that are going to challenge certain aspects of your personality and coping skills,” says Ms. Skvarla, who earned a doctorate degree in sport and exercise psychology from West Virginia University. She also received a master’s degree in counseling from WVU and studied dance as a minor while an undergraduate student at Bucknell University.

For example, dancers often have to spend several hours a day, multiple days a week, perfecting their craft — all the while wearing tights and leotards and assessing their body placement in a mirror. Plus, it’s an art that’s about telling stories and conveying emotion, usually without being permitted to say anything out loud. 

“I tip my hat to them because a lot of them are doing it at very young ages, real formidable years and you're still trying to figure out who you are,” she adds. 

Then there’s the fact that many professional dancers retire from the stage by the time they’re in their 30s and have to pursue another path. 

“Dance is something you do. It’s not who you are, and yet you may feel that dance is your calling,” Ms. Skvarla says. “How do you navigate those two things to stay healthy?”

For Ms. Jaffe — hailed by The New York Times as “America’s quintessential American ballerina” — a regular meditation practice helped her stay grounded during her professional career, which included 22 years as a principal with American Ballet Theatre. She’s now the dean of dance at University of North Carolina’s School of the Arts. 

“It changed me so much from the inside out,” said Ms. Jaffe, who still routinely wakes up at 4:45 a.m. to meditate for about 45 minutes. “Meditation really broke through some things that I didn't even want to let go of, things I didn't even know were an issue.”

She’s since developed a six-hour online program called “The Effect of Intention” that she’s implemented in five dance schools and universities so far. It introduces students to some of the science and research behind meditation, as well as helps them get acquainted with their own meditation practice. At the dancer wellness fair in Pittsburgh, she will be leading a master ballet class and sharing a portion of her meditation series in a separate session. 

Moving forward, Ms. Gaines would like to provide more resources like this event and will continue to raise awareness about the need for better mental health support in dance. Another goal for Minding the Gap is to help fund more research. While some studies involving mental health in dance do exist, Ms. Skvarla says, they often involve small, specific sample sizes. 

“That means the findings are relevant only when they can be applied to a similar population,” she explains. “The good news about it is there’s a lot of opportunities for researchers and practitioners alike.”

Filling in these voids in research and resources is not only important to help keep dancers healthy but also to keep their audiences robust for years to come. 

“I did not go to a dance performance for almost four years after I stopped. It was far too painful for me,” Ms. Gaines says. “There’s data that shows that at least 50% of the dance audience is current and former dancers. We need people to leave their training as dancers feeling emotionally cared for enough to want to continue to care for the art form.” 

Sara Bauknecht: sbauknecht@post-gazette.com or on Twitter and Instagram @SaraB_PG.

First Published: March 6, 2020, 12:30 p.m.