Sunlight falls across the left side of her face as she sits beside a window, her blue drop earrings catching the light like stained glass. Her red socks point towards the floor.

When Sandy talks about ballet, her hands and head move with her words. Music is not simply something she hears. It is something she feels.

For more than 35 years, the French-born ballerina built an international career before coming to Perth. She spent 11 years as artistic associate and principal rehearsal director at the West Australian Ballet. Today, she is a freelance ballet teacher, choreographer, and founder and co-director of Ballet4Wellbeing, adapting ballet for older adults and people with reduced mobility.

Her career has taken her from elite stages to seated ballet classes. But Sandy does not see the two worlds as opposites.

A barre too high

Sandy’s relationship with ballet began when she was five.

Her mother took her to her first class, but the experience was far from magical. The barre was too high. The other girls were taller. The teacher was strict.

“So I started crying. I said, mum, I don’t want to do that. I thought dancing was really dancing and I just wanted to dance,” she says.

At seven, she tried again after a friend recommended another teacher.

The teacher, a former ballerina in Hamburg, understood Sandy’s love of music and movement.

By 10, ballet was an everyday commitment. She studied in the morning and danced in the afternoon. At 14, she moved to Monte Carlo to study ballet full-time while being homeschooled.

“I was really feeling the moment despite being a very shy kid. But when I was dancing, I was never shy.”

Perfection as fact

That passion eventually took Sandy to professional stages across Europe. She continued performing after moving to Australia, with her final performance in Western Australia at 49.

That was well beyond the age many professional dancers are expected to leave the stage. A 2022 study found professional dancers typically retire before 40, due to the physical demands of performance but also cultural, social and economic pressures idealising youth in dance.

But professional ballet demanded more than passion.

Reflecting on that time she realised: “Perfection is a fact in professional ballet, it is not a requirement. I mean, we come from a generation where pain didn’t really stop you from doing what you love.”

Yet Sandy’s relationship with ballet changed when she moved from performing to coaching.

At first, she taught through her own experience.

“And then slowly I’ve learned to shift to their needs, with their bodies, their technique,” she says.

“When you are a ballerina, you are very self-centred and when you step to the other side, you realise what you need to do for those people to feel good and comfortable. It really opened my mind and is something I wish I knew as a professional ballerina.”

Forever a dancer

Aurélien Scannella, Sandy’s husband and long-time professional colleague, saw that transformation first-hand.

He remembers Sandy’s transition away from performance as difficult because she had always imagined herself remaining a ballerina.

“She thought she would almost die on stage, that she would be a ballet dancer forever,” he says.

When Aurélien moved to Australia to lead West Australian Ballet, Sandy followed him and became a ballet mistress – a professional who teaches, directs and rehearses dancers for stage. She continued performing when opportunities arose before eventually stepping away from regular performance. 

“The transition came to me as an opportunity. I had a problem with my hips and then I said, no, if I can’t really enjoy and be myself, then that’s it, I’m stopping dancing.”

But stopping performing did not mean stopping being a ballerina.

“I think being a dancer never leaves you, once you are one, you’re forever one,” she says.

Instead of asking what came after ballet, Sandy began asking what else ballet could do.

The answer became Ballet4Wellbeing.

Sharing the magic

The program was developed by Sandy and Aurélien to bring adapted ballet and music to older adults, including people with reduced mobility and cognitive decline.

“I felt like I was so sad because those people deserve to experience dance, to be taken care of and still experience beauty and feelings. I thought, why is it that because they’re old, that’s it, everything is over?”

She does not want participants to imitate professional dancers.

She wants them to experience what ballet gave her.

Roz Davies is one of those participants.

A long-time West Australian Ballet audience member, Davies had never participated in ballet herself before discovering Ballet4Wellbeing. After three months of classes, she says her chronic neck pain had disappeared.

“I can now touch my nose on my knee.”

But the physical change is only one part of what she values.

“I’ve gained so much thanks to Sandy. Mental wellbeing, social connection, physical exercise. Just enjoying the music, I actually feel like I’m in the ballet performing on stage during these classes.”

For Sandy, adaptability is essential. Every participant brings a different body and a different relationship with movement.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data shows 57 per cent of Australians aged 65 and over did not meet the guideline of at least 30 minutes of physical activity on most days.

Tiffa Li, a physiotherapist who works with people aged 65 and over, says maintaining strength and mobility can help older adults preserve independence.

“Finding a fun way that doesn’t feel strenuous to this age group is a beneficial way of doing this.”

But Sandy is not interested in turning ballet into another form of exercise.

“We are not sport. We’re still an art form.”

Today’s dancers have access to greater physical and mental wellbeing support than Sandy experienced in her early career. She particularly wishes she had received more mental health support after leaving home at 14.

But she believes dancers must still learn to understand their own bodies.

“You should always be in charge of your own body.”

For Sandy, the evolution of ballet should not mean losing the art underneath the athleticism.

She wants dancers to remember its history, its musicality and its emotional purpose.

And she wants older adults to experience it too.

Making greater connections

The contradiction at the centre of Sandy’s career is what makes her story more than one about retirement.

She spent her youth learning to control every movement. Now, she teaches people to move without worrying about whether the movement is perfect.

When asked what she hopes people take away from her classes, her answer is not about flexibility, strength or technique.

“I think a sense of grace and beauty.”

After a lifetime of experience, Sandy is sharing the feeling which first drew her to ballet as a child.

“Ballet for me is a way of expressing yourself, but also connecting with something that is greater than you.”

For Sandy, the ballerina never disappeared. 

She simply found a different stage.