In today's episode, the girls spoke with former professional dancer, Suvi Honkanen. Suvi was born in Helsinki, Finland, and began her ballet training at age five at Helsinki Dance Institute. She went on to train at Russia's Vaganova Academy and danced professionally with Finnish National Ballet for nine years before transitioning into writing and journalism in 2019.  Suvi recently wrote an article in Pointe Magazine titled “As ballet looks towards its future, let’s talk about its troubling emotional demands” and in this episode, Courtney and Sarah go even more in-depth on her experiences and opinions on how exactly this acknowledgment and change can occur in the ballet world.  To follow Suvi, you can find her on Instagram @susuvi To read her other work mentioned in the show at https://suvihelenahonkanen.medium.com/ If you are in crisis, please call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to reach a 24-hour crisis center, text MHA to 741741, call 911, or go to the nearest emergency room. Find a local MHA affiliate who can provide services and find a therapist by clicking here: https://www.mhanational.org/ The theme music is, "A Journey" by Kevin Hartnell It has been edited and reproduced under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). Follow us on Instagram! Dance; Better Podcast @dancebetterpodcast  Courtney @courtulrich Sarah @techballet OR If Facebook is more your speed: www.facebook.com/dancebetterpodcast Send in your questions or episode suggestions to [email protected] If you relate and found this episode helpful, please click follow/subscribe and leave us a review. (We might even read it on the next episode!) This helps to make our show more searchable, and will make it more accessible to more people...plus, we’d love to hear from you!