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The commanding, no-nonsense voice of Nancy McCloud will never be forgotten by her Milwaukee Ballet School and Academy students. 

McCloud was, for many students, an introduction to the world of professional ballet. As an instructor, McCloud represented the transition from beginner programs to more concentrated and comprehensive programs intended for young dancers seriously pursuing a performance career. 

McCloud is a stickler for technique: detail-oriented and passionate. 

“I can spot the wrong foot from a football field away. I do that even at shows. I’m sitting there picking them apart,” said McCloud. “Detail is so important. It’s like fingernails on a chalk- board to me, to see people not together.” Students at this level had to dedicate a significant effort to their craft, spending much of their free time in classes and building a community with others doing the same. 

McCloud has had a profound impact on her students, consistently inspiring and challenging them altogether. 

“She was the best teacher I’ve ever had. She made every student feel special, and she worked with every student and made genuine connections,” said Lily Schwigel, a student of McCloud’s for years. “She was very open. I feel like if we had a teacher that didn’t share about themselves, or was super strict, we wouldn’t have been able to bond as much in class.” 

As a past student of McCloud’s myself, I can attest to her influence. Her level of passion developed and inspired my own love of ballet. 

Abi Peiffer, a Grand View University Elementary Education major with an extensive dance background spanning nearly 20 years, cites Coach Stacie Hor- ton as the best coach she’s had. Horton is in her nineteenth season as head coach of the GVU Competitive Dance team and her ninth year as the head coach of the Competitive Cheer team. 

Peiffer was initially unsure if she wanted to go to GVU and was looking at other schools. 

“[Coach Horton] made me feel wanted and told me I’d be perfect for the team. She was very loving and after I came to GVU, it didn’t stop,” said Peiffer. “She always had that same loving, motherly, aspect.” 

Coach Horton has mastered the balance of allowing the team to work hard and have fun at the same time. Peiffer added that she is not only inspired by her coach but by her team’s community. “I think a lot of it actually comes from my team. They provide a positive atmosphere and they’re a supportive group of people,” said Peiffer. 

At the Milwaukee Ballet, Lily Schwigel’s class was small, and the sense of community amongst McCloud’s students was tangible. During breaks, students would gather at the foot of McCloud’s stool, asking for advice that ranged from sewing pointe shoes to personal matters. Outside of class, the group would attend Milwaukee Ballet Company’s performances and meet up for lunches and sleepovers. 

Schwigel’s class had six students, myself included. 

“When I moved studios and joined a team, I was with 20-something other girls, which was different,” said Schwigel. “I realized how much [McCloud] developed me when I joined a team because these girls have been dancing for many years, and they might be able to do more turns than me, but I always have them in ballet. That was my specialty.” 

McCloud was not always a dance instructor; years before the students she taught were born, McCloud was a performer herself. At age three, she enrolled in ballet lessons at a local school. 

“I drove my parents nuts. From the time I could walk, I’d dance around the living room to the radio. And I just never stopped,” said McCloud. 

At age 12, McCloud began commuting to Chicago from Wheaton, Illinois to study at the Stone-Camryn School of Ballet, which was considered the best ballet school in Chicago. 

“I’d run from high school, which wasn’t too far from the train station, and take the train to Chicago every frickin’ day,” McCloud said with a laugh. 

After graduating high school, McCloud moved to New York to start her career. 

“I was so young and naïve. Now, when I look back—and of course, it’s a different time—but how my parents let me go to New York at age seventeen, it is just mind-boggling,” said McCloud. 

“I auditioned for ballet companies and those are all long and boring stories but that’s when I realized ‘oh, this is hard.’” 

Transitioning into a ballet career is difficult. It is a highly competitive field, and not all dancers are treated equally. McCloud recalled an eye-opening audition at the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) with around 200 dancers. The company was looking for six dancers and McCloud made the last eight. At the end of the audition, she was asked if her parents were donors of ABT. 

“I said no and I did not get hired,” said McCloud. “I was crushed. I flew home. I was devastated.” 

Despite this, McCloud kept auditioning. 

“You get rejected so many times in theatre. I mean the auditions, I wish I kept a diary of auditions, I can’t imagine the hundreds of auditions I went to,” said McCloud. “You can’t let it weigh you down, because if you do, you’re done. There is going to be rejection, there is no way around it.” 

McCloud was later hired at the New Jersey Ballet (NJB), where she worked for a year. This is where she met Mat Mattox, who was serving as the artistic director of NJB at the time. 

Mattox himself had a prominent career dancing in films and on Broadway. McCloud credits Mattox as her most influential teacher. 

“He was just such a nice person. So humane and caring. He was so different from what I had before,” said McCloud. “I learned so much from him.” 

After this job, McCloud began touring with Disney on Parade, which was a brand-new concept in theatre at the time. This contract was supposed to last six months, but McCloud toured the United States, Canada and Mexico for two years. These productions were larger-than-life, with elaborate sets and costume pieces. For one show, performers wore 40 pound dresses and big Marie-Antoinette-esque wigs that weighed 22 pounds. 

“There wasn’t much dancing because the costumes were too heavy. If you lost your balance and you fell down, you would get suctioned to the floor,” said McCloud. 

McCloud went on to work a variety of jobs, including two Macy Thanks- giving Parades. She was even a backup dancer for Elton John at Carnegie Hall. 

“They were looking for backup dancers for a concert, and I didn’t even know who he was. I even held his arm in this dance routine, and here I am totally clueless. I was just so excited to say I danced at Carnegie Hall,” said McCloud. 

McCloud was a company member at Melody Top for eight summers, from 1973 to 1980, in the chorus with an occasional principal role. Every two weeks, new shows were performed. The company would rehearse the next show in the daytime and perform the current show at night. 

Melody Top entertained theatre-goers in the Milwaukee area for twenty-four consecutive summers from 1963 to 1986, with performances that varied from popular musicals to classic operettas. Productions usually featured one or two big-name performers from Broadway or the film/television indus- try, such as Chita Rivera, Jane Powell and Leonard Nimoy. 

Melody Top began in a tent. The theatre in the round was surrounded by 1200 to 1800 seats, with aisles used by cast and audience alike, and a light grid that was suspended over the stage by two iron poles that also supported the walls and roof. 

According to McCloud’s Melody Top playbill biography, she was praised as Young Vanessa for vamping a torrid “Bolero d’Amour” in FOLLIES (1977). This same year, a wooden dome was added to the structure to protect against inclement weather, marking the last season of the original tent. 

“They had this notion to convert the tent into a dome, but the thing is that other summer theatres had done the same thing and everyone had failed,” said McCloud. “The tent had personality. There would be a bad storm and everyone would go, ‘Oh my god were you there at Melody Top when that storm hit?’ Just wonderful stories that made it special.” 

Melody Top was converted to a dome and went under. Melody Top closed in 1986 and the site later burnt down in 1991. 

According to the BBC, the average dancer’s performance career ends around the age of 35, even though many expect to continue their performing careers well into their 40s. These dancers spend decades dedicated to performing, honing their bodies and craft alike, only for their careers to be cut short by various factors including injuries, degeneration of the body, the decision to have children, or simply an urge to try something new after years of dedication. 

Abi Peiffer has sustained multiple injuries. Peiffer has been dealing with knee injuries since her senior year of high school, when she had her first surgery. Last year, she had two surgeries and removed her meniscus from her right knee completely. 

“At that time I was like, ‘well I could stop dancing,’ but I just loved it so much, and thought it would be better and fine, and then this year I started having problems with my left knee and it started dislocating,” said Peiffer. 

The intensive nature of dancing makes it unsustainable as a lifelong career. But for many dancers, retirement from the industry as a whole is not an option. 

“There were times when I wanted to quit or give up, but at the same time, I have a big passion for dance and I can’t see myself not doing it,” said Peiffer. 

Even though Peiffer does not plan to pursue a performance career post-graduation, she remains in her element by teaching preschoolers and kindergarteners at the studio where she danced growing up. 

McCloud was a staff member of Milwaukee Ballet for over 30 years, retiring in 2018 from the Towne Center studio in Brookfield, Wisconsin. 

“A lot of my teaching is trial and error,” said McCloud. “I can’t explain how I became who I became. I just focused on what I thought was important, things I have learned from being on my own and dancing.” 

Years of experience in the dance industry can be attributed to McCloud’s wisdom. The life lessons that McCloud has learned are universal. 

“Don’t take rejection personally because sometimes there is a broader picture of what that person who is rejecting you is looking for, something else, and you don’t fit in that little niche. It’s not that you are bad,” said McCloud. “It is a fact of life: To succeed you are going to have rejection. Self-examine yourself, ‘what could I have done better? What could I have done differently?’ and move on from there to a new opportunity.”