Dance Critic Orysiek Will Write About Anything—But Not Anything Goes

Sheila Orysiek will draw just about anything, from various landscapes to pen-and-inks of women in the Hebrew Bible now on display at Temple Emanu-El. Last week, two birds caught her fancy, which she spied building a nest atop storefront letters at Grossmont Center.

“He keeps bringing stuff for the nest,” Orysiek said of the feathered pair. “Every once in a while she chucks it out—she doesn’t like it. And if he’s gone too long, she starts hollering.”

Orysiek took drawing lessons for three years in 1996.* Before that she was a ballerina, performing and teaching throughout San Diego County for 40 years. She says she decided to learn to dance after attending a Bolshoi Ballet performance with husband Leonard in Philadelphia.

“I didn’t have time right away because we moved out here and had a baby and bought a car—you know, the full catastrophe,” said Orysiek, who lives in west La Mesa. “But I was 25 and nothing was going to stop me. I’d made up my mind.”

She’s since retired from the stage and now writes as a dance critic for several publications, including ballet.co.uk under the pseudonym Anjuli Bai. She’ll critique anything, but says she chose ballet for herself because of its required discipline.

“I find it very freeing,” she said. “In ballet there’s a right way and there’s a wrong way. In modern dance there’s no set structure. Anything goes. I literally had an instructor tell me that anything goes.”

*Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Sheila Orysiek had  been drawing for only three years.