Grade 6 student Aniela D. shares her experience in competing in professional ballet since the age of eight, and the challenges that she faced. With her unstoppable passion, she participates in competitions, like she did most recently at the Dance World Cup in Prague, where she got second place.
What follows is Aniela’s story, in her own words:
I usually do ballet professionally, because I just love to dance; it’s in my blood. I do ballet for about four hours every day, and go on point and have many competitions. But it’s not that difficult. It might sound difficult, but I love it, and when you love it you won’t get tired of it.
I do have the choice [of doing another activity] but, like, honestly—and I do other activities at the same time—but I would prefer to do ballet my whole life.
They [ballet teachers] taught me how to never, ever give up and just keep going even if it’s hard—just push through, you’re gonna make it to success.
With ballet, I almost wanted to quit it one time, ‘cause I had to do this group dance, and in group dances, you have to be really in sync. And we have to literally do the same steps the same way. The teacher kept screaming at all of us and I ended up, like…I—I had like this—I don’t want to do this anymore and I hate the screaming. This even goes on today; she screams screams screams, ‘cause she thinks that’s how we are going to learn. But now I’m used to it.