Daniel Cho started his dance training at Swarthmore College, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Dance and Education. He then went on to train at Alonzo King LINES Ballet before dancing professionally at Verb Ballets and BalletX. He now works as a User Experience Designer within the health insurance space, where he ensures that digital products are intuitively designed to meet the needs of their users. He enjoys sharing his experiences from two very different careers to help and inspire others.
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Daniel Cho: When I was transitioning, there were a couple of things I knew I wanted in my next professional venture. The first was financial stability, or something more stable than a career in dance. Second, I still wanted to leverage my creativity in some way. The thought of not using that side of my brain was scary to me. I wanted to find a career that would allow me to use the experience I gained as a performing artist. The last and arguably most crucial part was the impact of what I was doing and how it could help larger groups of people.
Something I consistently felt while pursuing ballet - and this was a personal realization and not a generalization about others in the career - was that ballet felt inherently somewhat selfish. I started ballet at 20, which was very late, while I was in college. My professors told me I was crazy, and honestly, I was. But once I committed, I couldn’t let anyone tell me otherwise. Everything felt centred around me trying to pursue this one thing. At that time, the only people I was directly impacting were within the limited social sector in America—people who could afford to see ballet.
I wanted to do something that could impact more people on a larger scale. So, the three things—stability, creativity, and large impact—guided me. When I started looking into potential careers, I found UX design and realised it checked all those boxes. That’s how I decided it was the right path for me.
Daniel: I started ballet at 20, and it quickly became this all-consuming thing, and I thought, “I have to do this”. I trained so hard and just went wherever I had the opportunity to train. I also benefited from the privilege of being a male dancer starting late, which is more feasible compared to females. At 25, I got my first contract with a company, and in the first year, all my dreams came true. I was paid to dance and performed extensively, which was fantastic.
However, in the second year, cracks began to appear. I noticed that the kind of environments that come hand-in-hand with ballet companies are very hierarchical and top-down, especially in America where nonprofits are often underfunded and reactive. I observed how my female peers were treated differently, highlighting the privilege of being a male dancer. The unfairness of the standards being so different really stood out to me. In my second year, I became a dancer representative, acting as a liaison between dancers and leadership, which exposed me to how decisions were made.
So it was a combination of all these things that meant that despite it being my passion, and as much as I love ballet, the politics and drama around leadership made me reconsider. It came to the point where I decided that I didn’t want to be in an environment like this, especially because the sacrifices you make to pursue this career are huge.
These fears were emphasized when COVID hit. The arts industry in America was heavily impacted, which really showed what our society prioritizes. Seeing dancers from prestigious companies like New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre filing for unemployment really made me feel that this was going to be the future of being an artist in America. All this was the catalyst that emphasized the need for me to do something else.
I always tell people that if you can survive a career in dance, you’re already primed for so much else. My tolerance for difficult, adverse situations is now much higher.
Daniel: It was the summer of 2021, and things began to slowly reopen and we were getting a few opportunities to perform. I had already somewhat “checked out” of the job, and I’m not the kind of person who can fake something. Particularly once I knew that I was not going to be doing this anymore and that this environment was no longer conducive to me, I felt I needed to go and do something else.
I tried my best to overlap my transition out of the company and into my tech career. I enrolled in a remote bootcamp and planned to leave the company after a few months. By the time I phased out, I moved from Cleveland, Ohio to New York City to fully focus solely on my new career path.
Daniel: I applied for some scholarships and was fortunate enough to borrow money from my family. The plan was to repay them once I secured a job in my new profession. The timeline was longer than I had hoped, but eventually, I was able to manage it.
Daniel: I have come to realize that there are some similarities between the two. First of all, I feel that ballet is so unforgiving and everything is so binary; either that leg is turned out or it's not. That’s why it’s so beautiful, but also sort of cruel, in a way. That technique comes from the foundations. Starting ballet late made it hard for me to grasp these fundamentals. Even once I joined a company, I was learning new things about ballet every day.
I think that with UX design, it’s the same thing. There are fundamentals like font and color usage, the spacing of elements, and working out how to present information in an intuitive and visually aesthetic way that users can understand. The struggle I faced in learning those fundamental hard skills of design—like understanding color theory and using design tools—was similar to mastering ballet techniques, and took me a while.
I think that’s the beauty of these skills - people spend their whole lives on them. There’s always something to work on, more to learn. That duality of something being so simple and yet so hard to do is so engaging for me.
There were also many soft skills, such as learning how to perform and present oneself and being in high stakes situations, that came to me much easier because I had honed them with a career as an artist.
Daniel: Something that’s so interesting about being a dancer is that you’re in this unique environment every day where there’s so much going on. I think getting to perform is one of the most magical things ever, and I feel so lucky to have had many opportunities to do that. But there are also many lows that come with those highs - there’s a lot of emotions and pressure, and things can feel very high-stakes. So I always tell people that if you can survive a career in dance, you’re already primed for so much else. My tolerance for difficult, adverse situations is now much higher. I see other people who haven’t had those experiences outside of a corporate setting, and they seem to handle stressful situations in a much less constructive manner. I think the experiences from my dance career can never compare to an industry that’s so “vanilla” in comparison.
Daniel: I would definitely say so. I recognized early on that I wanted to go in the direction of contemporary ballet. I always loved ballet and knew I wanted to start every day with a ballet class, but I also loved contemporary and felt like that provided more of an outlet for expression and communication. I really liked the interplay of taking such a classically codified form and then breaking the rules or turning it on its head in contemporary choreography. That was what got me really excited in a dance setting. Recognizing that early on meant that I got so much exposure to different techniques and was able to access and experiment with all these different styles. I think that way of working really primes you to be able to look at situations from different perspectives.
Before I took my first contract in Cleveland, I was training at Alonzo King Lines Ballet in San Francisco. The two years I spent there was such a formative time, because they would have us question how we approached everything and try things out in as many different ways as possible. We worked really hard and it fueled our passion for dance, but we also really thought deeply about what we were doing, and were given the time and space to try things and to fail. I definitely attribute a lot of those skills, as well as being able to attack things from different angles, to the opportunities I had in my dance training. I can use those tools when I’m working out the best digital solution that will meet its end users, for example.
Daniel: I work as a user experience designer for a health insurance company in America, serving Medicaid and Medicare members across different states. These are typically the most underserved communities, and this company is specifically focused on catering to these people. My team is responsible for any member-facing digital products. For example, if a member logs into the website to check their benefits or find a covered provider, I focus on designing an intuitive interface that helps them achieve their goals with as few steps as possible.
Right now, a typical workday involves several meetings to talk about upcoming projects, followed by research and design work. One of the reasons I chose UX design is because there are so many different components to it - you interact with end users to figure out what their needs are, create wireframes and mockups, give presentations, and collaborate with software engineers to build the final product. This diversity and variety of roles was one of the reasons the job met my expectations so well.
Dance teaches you to showcase your best self in performances, but the reality is that the majority of the hard work happens offstage. That inherent skill that dancers have, of putting in that work and dedication to culminate in a performance, will be useful in so many different contexts.
Daniel: Creativity plays a huge part in what I do in my role as a UX designer. I didn't necessarily realize this about this field, but user experience design really welcomes people from unconventional fields. For example, my manager used to be a sculptor and photographer before she changed careers, and I have a lot of friends who are architects who transitioned to UX design.
The creativity aspect of it is what attracts people to it. As a UX designer, you are the advocate for the end user. If you think about the majority of a team within a company or corporation, they're primarily motivated by metrics, key performance indicators, and money, because that’s what their priorities always are. But I think that sometimes they forget to think about who the end users are going to be, as they are more focused on technical feasibility and financial impact. In contrast to that, being a designer means you're really focused on usability: “Is anyone going to use it? Do we even know if people need this product?” It involves forgoing your own biases and assuming the mindset of the person who's actually going to be using a product. I feel like that's the most critical aspect of being a UX designer. Plus, coming from an unconventional background means you have inherently more life experience in a very different industry, which allows you to empathize with people from different backgrounds. So if you consider empathy to be somewhat creative, then yes, creativity is very important.
However, a small warning: while UX design is creative, you have to keep in mind that the products you build ultimately need to serve the organization you’re working for, so it can sometimes feel like using one’s creativity for the company’s profit. This has motivated me to find my own personal creative outlets, as I think that’s now a separate muscle that needs to be flexed. My advice to those interested in UX design is to understand that while it is a creative field, this creativity is often aligned with corporate organizational objectives.
Daniel: Yes, it was brutal. Martha Graham said a dancer dies twice, and that resonated with me. Even as a late starter, dance was so inextricably tied to my identity. Every day, I woke up wanting to dance - there is something so all-consuming about it, and being at that level requires so much hard work and dedication.
Emotionally, I struggled with the question, “If I'm not a dancer, then who am I?” It was almost like a breakup. It was also physically difficult: as a dancer, I was in the best shape of my life, and then suddenly stopping left my body in shock.
When I was applying for UX design jobs, it was hard because people would see my application materials and be interested in talking about my dancer past, but would never follow up with me again. This really reinforced my identity struggles. My portfolio website, which is crucial for UX designers, still presented myself as a dancer, and my mentor at the time gave me a reality check and helped me realise I was still clinging on to this identity.
There’s another part to my story: after deciding to move to New York to focus solely on UX design, I continued applying for jobs but wasn’t getting responses. I didn’t realize it back then, but my design skills were not up to par with the very competitive applicant pool. It was a frustrating time. Then, unexpectedly, I received an offer from a ballet company in Philadelphia. I knew that if I didn’t take it, I would be wondering about it for the rest of my life. So I put a hold on my tech future, much to my parents’ chagrin, and became a ballet company member again.
That experience actually solidified why I had left the dance industry in the first place. The company was one I admired, but being in that environment reinforced the same issues I had previously faced. Looking back, I'm so glad I had that experience because it was the final confirmation that I needed to move on.
Daniel: I would reiterate that if you manage to have a career in dance, anything else will be easier in comparison. Our tolerance for difficult situations is higher than that of the average person. Whatever you choose to pursue afterwards is just going to be more manageable because of this resilience.
Dance teaches you to showcase your best self in performances, but the reality is that the majority of the hard work happens offstage. That inherent skill that dancers have, of putting in that work and dedication to culminate in a performance, will be useful in so many different contexts.
Another piece of more controversial advice is this: if you are in an environment that is doing you harm, I would advise you to honor yourself and get out of that environment. As dancers, we put up with so much, but I think just because you can put up with it, it does not mean that you should.
I am also cognizant of my privileges such as having the financial resources to do something else, but I’ve seen so many people around me who knew that they deserved better, yet stayed in a harmful environment. That being said, it is definitely scary to take that leap, and I don't mean to undermine anybody’s choice. Dance culture often pressures individuals to believe that their worth is tied solely to their dancing, but I would encourage dancers to recognize their own value beyond dance. We are some of the toughest people in the world, and even if it's absolutely terrifying to let go of that identity, finding a path that aligns with your well-being is so important. Embrace your resilience and know that you have the strength to pursue new opportunities.
Top image by Kolman Rosenberg
