A Ballerina Who Escaped

T he Times recently profiled the “Ballerina Farm” enterprise and its face, Hannah Neeleman. Neeleman is a Juilliard-trained ballerina and member of the LDS Church who now competes in beauty pageants while living on an expansive Utah farm with her eight children and billionaire husband Daniel, the heir to several commercial airlines. She shares her unconventional life on social media to millions of followers: Video snippets show her milking cows, attending rodeos, preparing for pageants, cooking from scratch as little children assist as sous chefs, and dancing ballet. The footage is aesthetically pleasing because the Utah landscape is stunning and because Hannah is effortlessly beautiful, which very few women can accomplish while tending to sheep.

Since Neeleman appears to be perfectly happy practicing religious and conservative values with her large family, the Times wrote a hit piece to destroy her. It is unclear why the journalist, Megan Agnew, bothered traveling to Utah to conduct an interview, since she obviously had a predetermined conclusion and an unwillingness to hear the answers to her questions. The headline calls Hannah the “queen of the ‘trad wives,’” yet Hannah states that “I don’t know if I identify with that [trad-wife label]” because “I do feel like we’re paving a lot of paths that haven’t been paved before.” Aside from the contrived effort to frame Hannah as a dangerous “trad wife” whose values threaten society, Agnew portrays her as a victim of a controlling husband who constantly interrupts and has never respected her boundaries. Agnew suggests that the family’s lifestyle is entirely determined by Daniel. Supposedly, Hannah made significant sacrifices while he made few, if any. The biggest tragedy, in Agnew’s framing, is that Hannah ended a professional ballet career to become a rural farmer — thereby abandoning her lifelong dream and instead following Daniel’s. 

The Times article went viral. Plenty of readers loved what seemed like damning gossip that dethroned the pageant queen; they reasoned that Ballerina Farm’s social-media content was entirely misleading, and their enviable lifestyle is actually hellish. There was also sympathy: Progressives and feminists insisted that Hannah was trapped in an abusive marriage and urged her to divorce Daniel. Then, the Times released a podcast that included audio clips of Agnew’s interview, and Hannah’s comments undermine the article’s uncharitable narrative. “But I don’t think I would change it,” Hannah said, reflecting on retiring from professional ballet. She adds that “Daniel was like, ‘If you wanna dance . . . go dance,’” but “I knew deep down that I wanted to raise my babies.” This revealed that Hannah is pleased with her career change — and that it was her decision, not her husband’s demand. More readers quickly recognized the profile as attempted character assassination, so the Times released a second piece by Agnew with a more generous characterization of the family (although some antagonism is still detectable). 

There has been no shortage of commentary about Hannah and her family since the dubious Times coverage; conservatives responded insightfully that the feminists who claim to support a women’s agency are horrified, even enraged, by a woman who chooses a domestic life. However, one important aspect has been largely undiscussed: the sad reality of a ballet career itself. 

I, like Hannah, grew up intending to pursue a ballet career. I had my first professional job at age twelve as “Clara” in the Rockettes’ Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall, won some national titles in competitions, and moved out at age 15 to attend a school with more serious training. I never planned to attend college, and I danced with a company. But I quickly realized that I loved ballet as an art, not a career. I wanted to eat three meals a day, earn more than about $40,000 a year, and end my constant worrying about a possible injury that could leave me unemployable. Even the off-season wouldn’t provide relief from the obligations; ballerinas can’t ignore the physical expectations as others might ignore work emails, so “vacations” are complete with classes for athletic maintenance. Ballerina is not a nine-to-five position that allows clocking out at night. Instead, it is more like being a nun, swearing an oath to subordinate all activities to ballet and devoting every waking moment to the art.

But the principal reason why I abandoned the goal of becoming a principal dancer is that I wanted freedom of expression. Certainly, ballet is an art that enables storytelling through movement. But working in a ballet company means abdicating individualism: I danced among women in the same costumes doing precisely the same steps, which were usually choreographed centuries ago. The objective is to uphold the tradition, not reinvent it. I had no voice — quite literally, since there is no talking in ballet performances — and instead performed whatever the director wanted in whichever roles I was assigned. I wasn’t an artist. I was a robot, one that could be easily replaced. So, I unceremoniously stopped dancing daily, attended university, and now work as a writer. Today, my medium for expression is words instead of my body, and I have difficulty imagining more expressive freedom for myself.

For whatever reason, those who perceive Hannah Neeleman as a victim are stunned that she left a ballet company in her early twenties, especially after so much rigorous training. It isn’t possible that she willingly decided to stop pursuing her dream, they assume. Yet most of the ballerinas I know quit in their early twenties, whether because of an injury, wanting a family, or simply preferring a less strenuous job. Some remained involved in the dance world as teachers or choreographers. Others pursued adjacent work, becoming physical therapists or fitness instructors. A select few went to university for entirely unrelated disciplines and entered completely different jobs. Of all these women, I think it is more accurate to say that they escaped rather than quit. But one thing is certain: Hannah’s departure from the professional ballet world makes her a stereotypical ballerina because retiring at twentysomething is the common career trajectory.

As a consequence of the Times profile, feminists consider Hannah a powerless woman dispossessed of decision-making authority by a dictatorial husband. They can post shrieking comments online asserting that she has no agency in her current role as a stay-at-home mom, farmer, entrepreneur, and pageant queen. Yet they forget that she would have none as a professional ballerina — and she chose to leave.