s cosmic girl 20 years ago when the dance film first hit theaters, and two decades later she still shines as one of the most iconic dancers in movie history – bad feet and all. The film followed Jody and a group of other young aspiring professional ballet dancers as they're accepted into New York City's prestigious American Ballet Academy, loosely based on the School of American Ballet.
The parallels are not lost on Schull that her experience is pretty much exactly the same as Jody's. "Yeah," she jokes, "although I didn’t have an illicit affair with any company members. I think I made the right decision with that part – not that anyone was necessarily raising their hand to give me the option."
"It honestly just feels like I was friends with everyone from the very beginning because we were all so close," she adds. "I wasn’t a company member yet, I has just been hired as an apprentice and I had experience dancing behind principal dancers; I didn’t necessarily have the experience dancing alongside the principal dancers," Schull says. "And Ethan and Sascha are so good. Both of them have retired now butEven just rehearsing alongside them while they would "mark" aka not do the moves full-out intimidated Schull.
"It probably just would have been a very different film had there been that whole storyline," she adds. "And it just would have been so darn long if they had included everything."One of Schull's favorite scenes to film was the night out in which Jody, Charlie, Eva, Eric, and Sergei blow off steam by working up "sweet sweat" at a salsa bar. But it was also one of the most challenging for her as well.
It ended up being a blessing in disguise for Schull, who was just about to begin her professional dance career while simultaneously starring in her first movie in the lead role. "I showed up and got to work with people who were quickly becoming my best friends and do choreography that was amazing and fun and made me happy; it was exactly what dance was supposed to be, this catharsis," she says.
Every time she would get the right momentum to turn forward, Stiefel ripping away the skirt would pull her right back. "I don’t really travel very well because I couldn’t get enough of a push off my back leg to go forward while he used his strength to pull it off the opposite direction," she says.