Oh, ballet! I can’t even explain what I feel when I hear, write, or say this word. I guess it’s because it’s not only a dance for me. Most people see it as a classical, old dance, but I see it as freeing myself. It requires so much concentration of your own, that you forget about the rest. I mean the “rest” as being all the personal problems we all have in our lives. It’s about emotions, having a balance between your body and what you feel.

I know we’ve all heard ballet stories or anecdotes, and if not all, most, are bad.I assume you all have a wrong perception about ballet. You might have heard that it hurts, everything about diets, a perfect body sculpture and posture, always looking at a mirror just to see if you’re “perfect”. One thing I can clear out is that those things depend on how obsessed you are with yourself, if you let “obsession” manage your life. It’s easy to feel obsessed with yourself when most of the time you’re looking at a mirror and making changes to see yourself flawless. I don’t mean “see yourself flawless” only in a physical way, but I refer to your emotions as well. How hard can you work to liberate all your feelings from the inside, from your soul.

I take joy in controlling my body, though it’s a very difficult thing to do. It takes years of training. Everything starts with the barre, where you can easily control your body because of the barre’s support. Then, you move to the center where you get to strengthen and keep balance of your whole body. Then there’s the work on the pointe. The pointe is the hardest level in ballet. While girls work on their toes, boys work on high jumps and strength. This is art, recreation and communication. Maybe you’ll be wondering, how is this a form of communication? Well, for me, it’s about feelings. I communicate without saying a word. Dancers interpret the dance to the audience, and that’s the communication towards them. It’s not only communication, ballet requires so much of everything for it to be flawless.

All types of dancing require a lot of technique and practice. Though, in my opinion, no other dance requires as much as ballet. We have to keep perfect balance while spinning, plié, and relevé. Not only balance, but we also have to fight gravity. We basically put our weight in our toes, trying to lift us up.  It’s not about memorising this steps or the whole choreography it’s just about feeling the melody of the music. When it comes to dancing ballet my mind goes blank, I don’t think about anything. Nevertheless, my body has a mind of it’s own, it prepares for the muscle strain that will come and for the world that dives me in.

Ballet makes me immerse in a whole different world, one in which I think I can pursue everything I propose to myself. I clearly love dancing. It makes me feel happy and satisfied with myself. I know it 's difficult and challenging, but that's the thing I love the most, and that's why I will never give up on dancing.