I am Anna and I am a ballerina in Prague. I have been studying dance since I was two years old. I can remember playing dress up i my mother’s tutu’s as she was a ballerina too and her mother before her. My mother would affix her tutu to my little body and turn the phonograph on with classical dance music. At first, we moved together through the music and danced as one.
As I got older, she began to teach me barre exercises and we practiced them over and over until they were perfect. When I was five, she began to teach me the steps of famous ballet pieces she had performed and by the time I was seven, my bones and my muscles became strong enough so that I could dance en pointe. I then began to have formal teachers and my father worked extra jobs and my mother took in laundry to clean for the rich people in town to afford my lessons.
I ate, breathed and slept ballet. No opportunity was left unturned and my parent’s sacrifice was all for me to become a prima ballerina with the conservatory. At 11, I left my family home and entered formal study. Since then, my life has been hard study, both in academics as well as dance. I had no time for friends or boy friends or the fun things I have read about that other teens so freely do. I had just returned back to Prague from celebrating my 18th birthday with my parents. It was good to see them again and I miss my mother and our times dancing together. My life is all about perfecting my craft now and as serious I must be about my craft, I have allowed myself one indulgence and that is to secretly attend a gymnastics class with some of my classmates. Continue reading Anna Netrebko’s story