Growing up, I spent every hour outside school moving between the dance studio and the basketball court. And as I watched the NBA players and Alvin Ailey dancers who were my heroes perform, I tried to understand why their performances felt so similar. I gradually realized they were all drawing from the same well of power.
In high school, basketball and dance competed for time. I played varsity basketball as a freshman, quit to focus on pre-professional dance, and then returned to the team senior year while continuing to dance. In college, I split my days between the graphic design studio and the dance theater, where my teacher, Cecil, demanded more of me as an athlete than any coach ever had.
As I tried to reconcile the athlete and the dancer in me, I came across a quote from Michael Jordan in Slam Magazine: the Jumpman logo, he said, was modeled after a ballet jump. That image crystallized everything. Watch an Ailey dancer leap and watch Jordan elevate—the mechanics are identical, the expression the same. It is pure human flight.
In the photo studio, I began reconstructing professional sports photographs through dance technique—dunks, kicks, backhands, pivots. The question that emerged was no longer whether a dancer is an athlete, but how the same movement intelligence manifests across disciplines.
Life kept testing this theory. When my brother tore his hamstring playing college basketball, I brought him to my dance teachers. Within weeks, his coordination and balance transformed. Years later, he still plays stronger than before. It confirmed what I had always known: dance training can restore, refine, and improve athletic performance.
As I pursued a career in digital marketing in New York, my own movement across boxing, biking, running, and dance rehearsals came to a sudden halt after an 18-wheeler ran me down in a Manhattan crosswalk. Bedridden for months, I had to relearn everything my body once knew instinctively. Strength training rebuilt my stability. Marathon training restored my rhythm. And dance restored confidence in my body and sense of self. In 2025, after my home burned down in the Los Angeles fires, physical practice helped me process the mental chaos.
The people who have shaped me most see the body as the truest source of intelligence. And my heroes remain those NBA players and Ailey dancers who demonstrate that peak performance is the truest form of expression, whether on court or stage. They guide what Balletic Athletic will become: a research-led studio exploring how movement intelligence combined with disciplined training can shape performance and recovery.
Balletic Athletic exists for anyone who has ever been struck by the beauty of their favorite athlete moving like a dancer, or who has had a dance teacher who trained like a coach. It is a space we will continue to seek out—a place where athletic training and artistic expression not only coexist but amplify each other. Come meet us here. We don’t have all the answers, but we can promise that movement will keep offering them.
— Alexis Copithorne
Founder, Balletic Athletic
