5 Things to Know About Ballerina Isabella Boylston, Jennifer Lawrence's 'Red Sparrow' Dance Double
For ballet fans, the name Isabella Boylston is a familiar one. As a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre, she's in the highest rank at one of the most prestigious dance companies in the world. But she's reaching new heights outside the industry, too—she plays Jennifer Lawrence's dance double in Red Sparrow, taking her skills from the stage to the screen.
"I think they were really committed to being as accurate as possible, so they wanted a principal dancer, a real ballerina," Boylston recently told WWD.
While Lawrence plays a ballerina-turned-spy in the movie, Boylston lives and breathes ballet on a daily basis. The 31-year-old has been dancing for about 28 years, so she's learned a thing or two about staying focused, working hard, and taking care of her body. Here are five things to know about her.
1. Boylston started dancing when she was 3, and has been climbing the ranks ever since.
While fellow ABT principal dancer Misty Copeland didn't start dancing until age 13, Boylston had an early start in the sport. She picked it up at age 3 in Sun Valley, Idaho, a town known for its skiing—dance isn't a huge thing there, she told WWD. According to Forbes, her family moved to Boulder, Colorado, when she was 7, and at age 12, she began commuting to Denver by bus for 2 hours each way to train with the Colorado Ballet Academy.
Like any professional athlete, her journey to the top wasn't easy. She moved to New York City to pursue a career in ballet before she'd even graduated high school, she told Backstage. "I lived in a two-bedroom apartment with five other teenage dancers in the East Village and probably made, like, $250 a week," she said. According to ABT, she joined the Studio Company in 2005, then became an apprentice in the main Company in 2006 and the "corps de ballet" in 2007.
In 2011, she became a soloist, and in August 2014, she was promoted to principal dancer—the top position a dancer can hold.
2. Most days, she dances from about 10 A.M. to 7 P.M.
You might not imagine a professional dancer has to take ballet class, but that's how Boylston starts every day. "The point of class is to warm up and focus on improving your technique," she told The Cut. (In fact, warming up should be a part of everyone's workout routine, dancer or not—it's important for preventing injury and improving performance.)
It's also a moving meditation for her. "You have to be so focused on your body and it takes you out of real life," she told The Cut. "[It's] probably my most important ritual because it gets my body and mind in tune and ready to go for the rest of the day—like a daily meditation and workout all in one," she also told The New Potato.
After class, it's onto hours of rehearsals. Boylston might dance for up to 9 hours a day, she told The Cut (although she typically has several breaks before she wraps up around 7 P.M.).
Show days look a bit different. "If I have a performance with three acts like Swan Lake, I will try to minimize my rehearsal to save all my energy to get through it," she said. (In the dance world, Swan Lake is known as one of the most demanding ballets to perform.)
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3. Her other workouts are focused on injury prevention and strengthening.
"My schedule is so intense I cannot imagine going to the gym and working out," she told The Cut. "But rehearsal is enough to stay in shape and be in peak condition, so I actually don’t do a ton of cross-training."
That said, she does what she needs to in order to stay healthy and strong. She often does an exercise where she stands with one leg on a BOSU ball to keep work on ankle strength and stabilization. "I've sprained my ankle so many times and at a certain point, I was just like 'Okay, I need to start doing some major stabilizing for my ankles,'" she told ELLE. "The BOSU ball really helps with that. I try to do ankle stabilizers every day."
4. She fuels her physically demanding days with balanced meals—but she's also a foodie.
For Boylston, food is both a source of fuel and a source of enjoyment. “People are so shocked by my diet,” she told Grub Street. “They have this idea that ballerinas just don’t eat a lot. I suppose every dancer eats differently, but we eat more than people think we do. We work so hard! You literally have to get enough fuel."
What she eats in a day varies, but she might have eggs and toast for breakfast—she also loves a variation on a classic breakfast sandwich. "I really like an English muffin with scrambled eggs, cheese, avocado, hot sauce, and mayonnaise,” Boylston previously told SELF.
She might go for a sandwich or salad for lunch, and pasta with some protein for dinner—in fact, pasta might make more than one appearance a day (often with a glass of wine). "I eat it a lot, and it’s a really good food for athletes," she told Grub Street. (Pasta is a great source of quickly digestible carbohydrates, which are key for getting fuel fast before a workout and replenishing the body's energy stores after.)
Pasta is also her go-to pre-show meal, she says—usually about 5 hours beforehand at a restaurant, she told ELLE. Also right before a show, she'll sometimes have a banana with coffee, which is another staple in her diet. "I usually eat a couple bananas before and during the show just to like keep my potassium level up because you just lose so much energy in one act, so I try to replenish at the intermission and I'll also drink water or Gatorade. Coconut water is really great, too," she told ELLE. "After a show I’ll eat anything—a burger, steak, fish, or more pasta," she told The New Potato.
While eating for energy is important, Boylston also just likes to eat food she enjoys. "I’ve always been a pretty adventurous eater, but I was raised on health food...I had never really eaten a cheeseburger as a kid," she told Grub Street. "Now I eat absolutely everything...When I go on the road to tour, I’m so excited to come back and have a New York bagel."
5. Red Sparrow is Boylston's first role as a dance double, but acting is a part of ballet, too.
Yes, Lawrence trained for the dance scenes in Red Sparrow, but it'd be tough to replicate the 28 years of elite training that Boylston brought to set. Boylston's not a stranger to acting, either. Ballet dancers have acting coaches as well—after all, when she steps onto the stage as the title role in Giselle or the dual roles of Odette and Odile in Swan Lake, she's playing a character.
Of course, the subtleties are different. "When I performed in the Met in front of 4,000 people, everything had to translate to the back row, so you had to do things really big, dance big, with acting and gestures," she told Backstage. "Everything has to be magnified to carry through the theater, and for film it’s the opposite. Everything has to be subtle because you can read every little detail."
But who knows—after this turn as Lawrence's incredibly talented dance double, maybe we'll see Boylston in a role of her own on the screen soon.
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