Moving Through Air, Moving Through Life

When winter light falls across her shoulders in New York, Julie Ludwick has already been dancing for sixty years.Sixty years — what does that mean?It means a person has given her entire body to time, her entire spirit to the stage.It means choosing to trust her weight to a steel bar, a gently swaying low-flying trapeze, or a ladder hung in the air — and choosing to do so again and again for decades.At Fly-by-Night, the nonprofit aerial dance company she founded in 1999, Julie is not just a “director.” She is still, first and foremost, a dancer who has not come down to earth — someone who continues to fight the world’s heaviness with her own weightlessness.I. A Child Who Grew Out of Alaska’s DarknessJulie grew up in Alaska: a place of long rains, longer nights, and deep isolation.When she was six, a classically trained ballet teacher happened to move into their small town. Ballet became a narrow beam of light cutting through the pervasive dark.Years later her sister would tell her: “You always stood at the front of the barre, like you already knew where you were going.”At twelve, her older brother died by suicide — a rupture no one talked about. In that era, in that place, grief was something swallowed, not spoken.“Dance saved me,” she says.It became the only space where her sadness could be worked through physically, where discipline and sweat could temporarily silence fear.II. Her First FlightIn college she shifted toward modern dance and eventually found her way to a pivotal moment: performing in an aerial work by mentor Robert Davidson.The first time she floated off the floor, she understood something immediate and irreversible:Dance didn’t have to happen only on the ground.And she didn’t have to forever obey gravity.“It felt like climbing trees as a kid,” she says — except this time she could stay in the air.She moved to New York, juggling teaching jobs, late-night rehearsals, grant proposals, and endless freelance gigs — anything to keep flying.Fly-by-Night became an official nonprofit in 1999, built with exhaustion and faith.III. Between Flight and the Ground, She Is Always BalancingFrom the outside, aerial dance looks effortless: bodies floating, twirling, defying physics.Behind the scenes, Julie spends far more time with spreadsheets than spotlights.Insurance forms, grant applications, rehearsal contracts, theater negotiations — the invisible labor that makes one hour of performance possible.“To keep dancers safe, I have to pay for liability insurance, workers’ comp, high-ceiling rehearsal spaces, everything,” she says.“And to make one dance, I might need to write dozens of documents.”She advises her students: Artists don’t retire.But in private she admits: “I’m always exhausted.”She does not romanticize the artist’s life — not because she is cynical, but because she knows: what sustains her is not comfort, but the stories that are worth being told.IV. Her Works Are Born from the Fractures of Her LifeJulie’s choreography often rises from grief.On the flight home after her father died, she saw an entire dance unfold in her mind, scene by scene, like clouds arranging themselves into meaning. She returned to New York and immediately began rehearsals.During the pandemic, her sister fell ill and Julie’s family sent her “joys” — little things that made them happy.After her sister passed, Julie continued to find joy but no longer knew where to send it.So she sent it to the stage.“Dance makes these experience meaningful,” she says — not because it erases pain, but because it transforms it.V. In Her Classroom, Dancers Return to Their Bodies — and to ThemselvesJulie often tells her students: “Listen to the body,”“Let the image move you.”Her teaching blends somatic awareness, improvisation, and Eastern philosophy. She is not interested in producing copies of herself but in helping each dancer uncover movement that belongs only to them.“Technique matters,” she says, “but the movement has to grow out of you.”She loves watching a student find something new in the air — like a stone cracking open to reveal light.VI. On Continuity and Hardship: The System Has Never Favored ArtistsJulie speaks candidly about the systemic challenges facing dancers: underfunding, costly rentals, little pay, shrinking grants, and the near impossibility of financial stability.“It’s a risky life,” she says. “But I don’t know what else I’d do.”She understands clearly:Being an artist is not freedom — it is perpetual balancing, a kind of lifelong improvisation.But “If you choose it, it will give you what you most need in your life.”VII. The Future: Flying Until the Body Says NoToday, her company faces tightening resources.She continues to write grants, run small fundraisers, nurture her dancers, and imagine the next work — even as the arts landscape grows more uncertain.She doesn’t know whether the future of dance in New York will improve.She doesn’t know whether the city will become too expensive for dreams that require so much space — literal and figurative.But she knows one thing: as long as her body can fly, she will fly.Support Fly-By-Nightins @flybynightdanceHoliday Auction: https://www.32auctions.com/HolidayAuctionFBNDonate: https://flybynightdance.org/donate/Audition: https://flybynightdance.org/participate/classes/collab & contact: [email protected] This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thetrygirl.substack.com