Meet Fuki Takahashi, the Dancer Sculpting Her Love of Ceramics
Charlotte Ballet dancer Fuki Takahashi first tried ceramics as a middle schooler in Japan, but she didn’t pick up a block of clay again until the COVID-19 pandemic. She was too busy with ballet, which she had begun in Japan and continued at Princeton Ballet School when her family moved to New Jersey. Her career led her to the Orlando Ballet’s second company, Atlanta Ballet, and, most recently, to Charlotte Ballet.
When COVID shut down all performances, Takahashi turned back to arts and crafts. “I tried so many hobbies,” she says. “I did candlemaking, sewing, and I started making my own leotards. That was a phase. I made sourdough and tried knitting and crocheting.” Ceramics were intimidating to her at first, because of the amount of supplies it requires to get started. “But I just jumped in feet first, eyes closed, like ‘Let’s try it,’ ” she says.
She discovered the flourishing online ceramicist community and found a local store that sold everything she needed. “I dragged my husband into it,” she says. Takahashi met Dylan Clinard when they both danced at Atlanta Ballet. “He’s very encouraging when I want to do something I’m passionate about. He drove, I bought 100 pounds of clay, and he hoisted it into the car for me.”
At first Takahashi would create her projects and drive them 25 minutes each way to be fired in the store’s kiln. But as her enthusiasm grew, she decided to buy her own kiln off of Facebook Marketplace. “I don’t know how safe that was. It does produce toxic gas when you’re firing a glazed piece,” she says. “So my apartment kind of looked like a crime scene. I had a tiny sunroom with the kiln, and then bought two shower curtains that I duct-taped to the entrance.”
Sculpting with clay brings Takahashi creative fulfillment and reminds her of dancing. “In dance, especially improv, you’re sculpting your body in certain ways. And clay, like our muscles, has a memory,” she says. “When you’re making, for example, a small pinch pot, you start with a ball and stick your thumb in it and push it around with your fingers to make a bowl. If you flatten it and then you try to mold it again, when you fire it, it kind of goes back to its original shape.”
Some of Takahashi’s favorite items to make are jewelry, mugs, and chess sets. Her pasta-themed chess set went viral on TikTok with over 31 thousand likes. Now, every family member, friend, and co-worker gets a handmade gift for birthdays and holidays. She also invites people over to paint pieces she has sculpted. And every day before rehearsal, she drinks out of a handmade mug.
After her husband’s retirement, the couple moved to his home state of North Carolina, and Takahashi joined Charlotte Ballet in 2025. Now, her pottery studio is in her home’s basement. “I have a little corner for myself, where I have my supplies and lights, and it’s by a gorgeous window that looks out onto the lake,” she says. “When I have a day that I feel like I need to process, I go home and I tell my husband to leave me alone for an hour or two.” She also spends hours on her ceramics on the weekends and has recently begun pottery-wheel classes.
“It’s kind of like therapy for me, just like how baking and cooking is for some people,” Takahashi says. “You only focus on the clay and that’s it. It connects to that work-and-life balance that I try to achieve, with ballet being a hard job. And just like dance, your pottery is never going to be perfect.”
