Working Out With Sara Esty
From Miami City Ballet to Broadway—and the steam room
For most dancers, performing six nightly shows and two matinees a week would be the ultimate test of stamina. But for former Miami City Ballet soloist Sara Esty, she’s actually dancing less now that she’s an ensemble dancer in An American in Paris on Broadway. “I used to spend six to seven hours a day just rehearsing,” Esty says. “I never had to pay much attention to keeping myself in shape because I was dancing so much.” But while the hours may be fewer, the intensity remains. “The show is so physically demanding,” she says. “And it’s not just the dancing—the dancers do all the set moves ourselves, and the sets are heavy!”
Esty, 29, handles one of the show’s most demanding dance tracks and understudies the lead role. Though unlike preparing for a ballet performance, where “you’re jumping, jetéing and bouncing all over the stage,” Esty says she now just has to focus on having a strong core and progressively warming up throughout the day, leading up to the climax of the show: a 17-minute ballet.
On days without a matinee, Esty usually has a four-hour rehearsal before her evening performance, so she doesn’t always make it to a ballet class. Instead, she uses her two-hour break after rehearsal to rest and eat, then arrives at the theater 90 minutes before curtain to give herself a pre-show warm-up, which includes light yoga, stretching and a ballet barre (“it’s like breakfast—I can’t function without it,” she says).
In particular, Esty makes sure her ankles and calves are warm and loose in order to handle the show’s many shoe changes. “My physical therapist suggested a regimen to keep my Achilles tendons elongated so they don’t get tight going from pointe shoes to heels to tap shoes and back again,” she says. It includes pliés and tendus, and stretching her calves on a set of stairs, standing in parallel and letting her heels hang off the edge of a step.
Esty also tries to hit the gym about once a week. She warms up on the elliptical for 20 to 30 minutes, followed by planks, calf stretching and foam rolling. She started focusing on planks the summer before the show opened in Paris to build core strength, and has stuck with them. Her go-to move: holding a plank on her forearms or hands for one minute, then resting for one minute, and repeating three to four times. But Esty’s real motivation for hitting the gym? The steam room. “I’ll even go in between matinee and evening shows just to sit and loosen everything up,” she says. “Because by the end of the show, my body is in total shock.”
Breakfast: Hard-boiled eggs, fruit and toast with peanut butter. “And coffee, of course.”
Pre-Matinee Snack: A green juice from Jamba Juice
Lunch: A healthy sandwich, trail mix and dried fruit or peanut butter on a granola bar. “I love the trail mixes from Trader Joe’s—there’s one with almonds, cashews, cranberries and mini peanut-butter cups.”
Dinner: A salad with romaine, spinach, cucumbers, tomatoes, olives, chicken or steak, and feta or cheddar cheese, with crispy onions on top. “I make sure there’s an equal balance of dark-green vegetables and good-tasting stuff.” She’ll also have a cup of soup, usually chicken noodle, kale quinoa lentil or beef stew.
Post-Show: “I give my body something it will love, like a Clif Bar, almonds, flavored ice-cold coconut water, or even leafy green vegetables and some steak, pork or chicken.”
Sweets: “I’m a sucker for a cookie or cake.”