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| Posted by Sloan
One of the fortunate things about being with a big company like the New York City Ballet is that they have workers compensation insurance for when their dancers get injured. It works for them because they get reimbursed by the insurance company for paying my salary when I am injured. And it works for me because I can still support myself while I heal my injury.
For the most part, the system is fairly smooth. But periodically as your injury continues, you are called to a state building on W125th St. for a hearing, so that the insurance companies lawyer, and your WC lawyer, can hammer out the finer details of your injury.
This past Thursday was one of those days. Above is the view from the FDR on my way uptown.
West 125th Street is dangerous… because of all the shopping opportunities.
The building where my hearing is, on the left… and the newly revamped Apollo theater on the right.
After signing in, everyone has to wait in this big room filled with incredibly uncomfortable wooden benches. There, your lawyer comes over to chat with you and let you know what everyone is hoping accomplish with the hearing. As I was talking with my lawyer, I found out that the insurance company had all sorts of information wrong and/or missing.
After an hour of sitting, we were called back into one of the conference rooms. There’s a big table. I sit at the head, the insurance company’s lawyer is on the left side of the table, my lawyer on the right, and the judge sits up a few steps higher on the opposite end of the table with a computer in front of him. There’s a voice recorder in the center of the table, and sometimes a stenographer taking notes.
Not much happened at this particular hearing but it was a good chance to get some information corrected that I didn’t know they had wrong in the first place. It’s great that this system is in place, but it can feel a little scary to depend on it when it is an environment where the people in control do not always understand dance as a profession. Trying to explain how you were going to doctors and getting physical therapy, but still dancing… and explaining how, yes I am currently employed by the company again but it is temporary and it’s a non-dancing role in the Nutcracker. It doesn’t mean I am healed. I still need physical therapy.
