By: Diego Carrasco

This is the first in a series of interviews of ex-ballet dancers. Peter Schetter is 47 years old and lives in Ellisville, WI., about a thirty minute drive east of Green Bay, not far from where he grew up. He works an organic farm on about half of eighty acres of land he purchased while still in his twenties and dancing in the New York City Ballet (NYCB). As he says, "While everyone was spending their money on black leather jackets and such, I was still in my Wisconsin flannels, saving all the money I could in order to make my payments." After dancing eight years with NYCB, he returned to Wisconsin and danced another thirteen years for the Milwaukee Ballet Company, becoming one of its most elegant and popular dancers. He currently sells his produce at the Cathedral Square Farmer's Market held in downtown Milwaukee on Saturdays during the summer and fall.

During the off-season, Peter renovates run down properties on his own. It is a labor of love for him and he seems to have an innate understanding of what to most of us is the hidden potential of a property. Self taught, he has a real knack for restoration and an unerring sense of where the next hot, new development area will be; in the past he has almost quintupled his initial investment.

I sat with Peter at the dining table of his little farmhouse in Ellisville this past June and posed some questions to him I had prepared beforehand. To start with, I asked if he had any physical and/or psychological after-effects as a result of his previous career as a ballet dancer.

Peter Schetter: I had to have metatarsal surgery for my big toe near the end of my career and then just before I stopped the other one started giving me problems. Except for that, there hasn't been anything else of significance. In fact, I would say that I'm probably in better shape than I might otherwise have been if I hadn't danced for a living. It's hard to say though, because you don't know what life might have been like if you hadn't followed a particular path in life. I mean, for some, leaving home to study ballet in a different state was difficult and distanced them emotionally from their parents. [Peter went to study at the North Carolina School of the Arts, in Winston-Salem, and later attended the School of American Ballet in New York City.] For me, leaving home to go study at 14 years of age was a positive experience. I was forced to become independent and self-reliant and, if anything, the separation made me closer to my parents.

Diego Caarrasco: What was it that compelled you to study ballet and pursue it as a career?

P.S.: The ballet teacher was really handsome. I didn't know at the time that that was the attraction, but anyone could see that Jury Gottschalk was like no one else in De Pere, WI. He was a cosmopolitan, elegant European.
Jury taught ballet in the gym at school as part of a federal fine arts program for public education. I would hear the music playing from down the hall and I would look in as I passed. Eventually I decided to participate in the class and that's how Jury became my first ballet teacher.
Ballet classes didn't seem strange to me because I was already physically disciplined. My parents were acrobats and my siblings and I were part of the family act which we toured during the summer months. We would do four or five shows in a day, the last one