It’s rare for someone to find their true calling, but at only 13 years old, Cooper Sainiak discovered his. He’d work day and night to dig out a career as a professional ballet dancer.
The dream was vivid. His vision was clear. Until — in the biggest competition of his life — Cooper, alone on stage, literally fell on his face. He knew something had to change.
Sainiak, a senior engineering major, found a different path. After three years at Pitt as a full-time student, Sainiak broke barriers by being the first man to ever make the Pitt Dance Team — and did so as a first-semester senior.
Saniak, at 5 years old, went on a family trip to Disney World. He participated in a live dance-along to High School Musical, where cast members taught the kids a dance from the movie.
“I was so locked in,” Sainiak said. “My mom noticed that I had the most serious expression. I came out of whatever the dance circle was, and my mom said, ‘You really enjoy dancing. Do you want to start dance classes whenever we get back to Pittsburgh?’”
Heading into kindergarten, Sainiak joined a local dance class. A few years later, when he changed his focus to ballet, Sainiak took a field trip to Canada. He and other members of his ballet school watched the Eric Bruhn competition, where the National Ballet of Canada performed Cinderella, the first full-length ballet Sainiak ever saw.
“It was so incredible. Literally life-changing,” Sainiak said. “After that moment, I wanted to be a ballet dancer. There are no other options.”
Entering high school, Sainiak, a Seneca Valley native, had found everything he wanted in ballet — a loving but competitive community, a discipline applicable to other facets of life and an art form that could turn into a profession. But the grind to improve took a toll on Sainiak’s body.
Halfway through his junior year, Sainiak partially dislocated his knee and repositioned it himself. Even after extensive physical therapy, Sainak suffers from patellar tendinitis. The years of constantly flexing his ankles at “weird angles” and holding up other people also gave Sainiak achilles tendinitis.
The realities of a career as a professional ballet dancer set in. Instead of spending his mornings dancing and arriving at school midday like he’d done until his junior year, Sainiak spent his senior year as a full-time student. Ballet became an after-school activity. Still, the grind didn’t stop, and a career as a professional ballet dancer remained feasible.
“January is when audition season really begins in the ballet world,” Sainiak said. “Because it was my senior year, I was auditioning for multiple dance programs at the collegiate level for a ballet performance major. I was traveling a lot [and] dancing a lot.”
Then, Sainiak was invited to compete in the American Dance Competition International Ballet Competition and made it to their final round.
“In that time period, I started pushing myself really, really, really hard,” Sainiak said.
Sainiak was excited to end his senior year on a high note. But the pressure of winning the ADCIBC and an excellent final performance started to impact his physical and mental health.
“With the competition coming up, I wanted to be in the best shape,” Sainiak said. “I ended up not really taking care of myself. I went into a really, really bad caloric deficit. It wasn’t to the point of a diagnosed eating disorder, but I was so critically counting my calories to make sure I was under a certain amount to try and fit this ballet body.”
The injuries from previous years crept back. Sainiak became fatigued and irritable, and his self-esteem did not match the high quality of his dancing. But the final round of the ADCIBC was right around the corner, and all the work and energy would prove worth it.
“I actually did pretty well considering how horrible I felt,” Sainiak said of his final round performance. “But during my classical solo variation, which is the most important part of the competition, I actually fell on my face. I was so embarrassed, because, of course, I was the only one who fell … And it was doing something so incredibly simple that I’d do all the time.”
The fall was a wake-up call. Sainiak looked back on all the effort and time spent and wondered if he could keep that pace in the future.
“After we got back to Pittsburgh, I remember just feeling so deflated in my room,” Sainiak said. “I walked downstairs and I knew something had to change — that I needed a step back from all this pressure I was putting on myself.”
Ballet was no longer fun for Sainiak. The environment was “toxic,” and he shifted his focus to applying to colleges for academics rather than specifically searching for a dance major. Sainiak picked Pitt for a “new environment” that was “still close to home.”
“I totally support them all — everyone in the dance world,” Sainiak said. “It’s so small. I love them all so much. I just knew it wasn’t for me anymore.”
Heading into college, Sainiak was unaware Pitt had a Dance Team. “When I got here, dance was just out of my mind,” Sainiak said. “I didn’t really know anything about dance at the collegiate level, other than the ballet bubble, as I call it.”
Sainiak joined Phi Alpha Delta, a pre-law fraternity, where he met two girls on the Pitt Dance Team.
“Kennedy Tewell and Mia Flaherty — they’re so awesome,” Sainiak said. “Kennedy is actually my twin. I was like, ‘I used to be a dancer,’ and that’s how I heard about the Dance Team at first. I was always interested in joining, but with the engineering schedule, I was going through it academically. I needed to focus on my grades.”
In December of his junior year, Sainiak realized his senior year course load would feel lighter than normal. The idea of returning to the dance world seemed realistic.
“I thought, ‘What if I auditioned for the Dance Team?’” Sainiak said. “I haven’t danced in a while, but I brought it up to Kennedy and Mia, and they said, ‘You should do it! Just get back in the studio once or twice.’ That’s not what happened. It was a little bit harder than that.”
Sainiak made a workout plan called “DANCE TEAM LET’S GO.” He added making the Dance Team to his New Year’s Resolutions. He started conditioning and endurance lifting ahead of a mid-March deadline, when Sainiak submitted his materials to the Dance Team.
“A week later, I got an email from our coach with all the choreography we had to learn,” Sainiak said. “I had met another girl on the team named Meadow [Robertson], and we’d go to the Pete at 6:30 every single morning and she would help me drill my dances. I’m a ballet dancer — not the Dance Team’s style — so she really gave me pointers.”
A month after an in-person audition where Sainiak also had to learn skills and dances on the fly, Sainiak received an offer to join the Dance Team.
“Everything in the dance world is so competitive. But it really does feel like a team,” Sainiak said.
Sainiak’s presence left a lot for the coaches and staff of the Pitt Dance Team to consider. He’s a first-year on the team, but a senior academically — something Sainiak describes as “taboo.” As the first man to ever join the Dance Team, Sainiak spent a lot of time with his coaches and the spirit administration discussing “equivalent uniforms” he could wear to match the women on the team.
“At first, the coach was a little hesitant, just because I bring a lot to consider,” Sainiak said. “It’s kind of like working me into this program, getting me all of these things, even though I’m only going to be here for nine months.”
Sainiak hopes all his effort isn’t wasted. Now that the barrier is broken, it needs to stay down. “I put in all of this work behind the scenes with the coaches and students,” Sainiak said. “So I hope that more guys will join the dance team, or at least be interested in either cheer or dance. The team is incredible and I hope I was able to open a door for others.”
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