Mixing Music and Classical Ballet with Clara Miller
Honesty inspires professional ballet dancer, Clara Miller, who found music during the pandemic and recently recorded her first single. Read to learn more about her story.
Photo: @clanklin
First, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background with ballet and how you got started with music.
I’m originally from Florida and moved to NYC when I was 14 to go to ballet boarding school. When I was 18, I joined New York City Ballet and also got a guitar for my birthday. The first song I learned was “Wagon Wheel” by Darius Rucker, and then I started doing covers of songs by British men and I would do the accent and everything. I didn’t sing with an American accent until I was like 24. I knew I wanted to perform music as the frontman of a band, but then I realized I wanted the whole experience of writing and performing my own music. My friend Devin is like my manager/mentor/music historian and has basically taught me how to think about songwriting. My aunt was also super enthusiastic and sent me books on songwriting because my family is a bunch of bookworms.
Generally, what inspires you?
Photo: James Jin Images
I’m inspired by honesty. As long as someone is writing honestly and not just phoning it in with easy, sugar-coated writing, I’m on board. When I discovered Phoebe Bridgers’ music, something clicked and I realized I could write about some of the traumatic things I’ve experienced and never had the voice to express. I’ve always been drawn to performing arts because you get to be the interpreter and say, “Look everybody, I’m saying this thing and you have to pay attention because I’m standing on stage.” I’m pretty shy in day-to-day life; I didn’t speak for basically the first two years of being with NYCB, so it’s been a big leap to go from physical movement to writing.
What has been your favorite role you performed with NYCB and why?
I loved performing Brahms Schoenberg Quartet by George Balanchine in 2020, right before COVID hit. I had just come back from an injury and had taken the time to start seeing a psychiatrist and therapist, and mentally, I was probably in the best place I’d been since joining the company. Suddenly, everything was easier and I could pick up choreography faster and dance with so much more confidence and expansiveness. I did the second and fourth movements of the ballet, which was great because I got to do the lyrical stuff and the dramatic, “in your face” stuff in the same ballet.
Photo: Andrea Mohin for the New York Times
Performing has been seriously affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. How have you been creative throughout the past year?
Songwriting became my outlet during the pandemic. Just before it hit, I met some musicians from Juilliard who became friends, and some of them stayed in the city. They inspired me to keep pouring out into music, and eventually I could show them stuff I’d done. They were always super encouraging, even though I was singing in basically a whisper and still suck at guitar.
What does a typical day look like for you in 2021?
A typical day for me is: I get up and take my dog to the local coffee shop and then we sit on my stoop while I eat. Sometimes, I go to physical therapy because I got spine surgery for the second time back in the fall. Then, I go to the gym and workout, then go to the theater and dance, and then go home and work on writing music and recording it. I always take a bath and maybe do a couple TikTok dances (I got super into TikTok when I was bedridden after surgery). I’ve literally been going to bed at 9:00 and waking up at 8:00, so I feel awesome. I’m also in the middle of a Lord of the Rings marathon with friends.
What did the process look like for recording your first studio EP?
My friend Devin told me last year to write as much as possible before going into a studio and recording, and he was so right. It hit me one day that I had enough material to make an EP, so I booked a recording studio that my music friends had recorded at before, The Bunker Studio. Then, I asked my two Juilliard friends, Daniel Hass and Cameron Macintosh, who are in a band together, to do instrumentals, and they were so on board. The mixing engineer I got paired with for my recording sessions, Alex Conroy, has been a huge blessing. He goes above and beyond. We just finished recording everything and will be mixing in May, so I’m thinking a summer release. It’s crazy to see these songs I wrote in varying states of well-being, by myself and tentatively, just bloom so beautifully with the help of other people. I can’t wait to release but I’m following some more Devin advice and sitting on it until it’s really done.
Using your real life experiences growing up in the ballet world along with mental health struggles, what do you hope listeners gain from your lyrics and sound?
Growing up in the ballet world, there’s this expectation for everything to be polite and gracious, and for everyone to be at 100% all the time when they’re working. Professionalism sometimes looks like submission. I wanted to fit into this world growing up, so I felt a lot of shame about my shitty home life and the depression I experienced. Then, you deal with those scars when you grow up, and it’s taken me a while to figure out what I need. I feel so much less alone when I hear other female songwriters write about their hard experiences with family and men and mental health. So, I hope I can do the same, and especially show younger dancers that they’re not alone if they’re suffering mentally or relationally. And that it’s okay to branch out into other fields. It doesn’t mean you’re not giving your all or that you’re distracted.
Photo: @clanklin
What can we look forward to from Clanklin in the future?
I’m hoping to play as much as possible in the future. I can’t wait for live shows to be possible again. I just played my first show on stage in over a year this month, but it was a livestream and I can’t wait to see faces in the audience. I’m really excited to do a music video for the album with an amazing videographer friend. And then, I just hope to collaborate with my musical friends, because I genuinely love their music. And I also love creating merch, so check out my website!
Visit Clanklin’s website at www.clanklin.com
Follow Clara on Instagram at @clanklin
Listen to Clanklin on Spotify, SoundCloud, and Youtube