Who are you? Tell yourself.
My name is Anna and I am 19. I am a ballet dancer. I started dancing when I was four at “Studio Danza”, a local ballet school. I moved to Milan when I started secondary school and stayed there for five years. I attended a dance academy, the “Ukrainian Ballet Academy” and in my last year I auditioned for a Russian ballet company and I was accepted. This world tour I’m doing at the moment has taken me to Australia and New Zealand, where I am at the moment; it will also take me to Cyprus and then to Spain for two months. Dancing is my greatest passion but I love art in general: I enjoy going to art museums, to the cinema… I love art in all its forms. I also love being outdoors and spending time with my family, my friends, but above all I love travelling. This job I managed to get allows me to travel around the world and explore new places, which is one of the things I love most, together with dancing. At the moment, I am able to do and enjoy both.
Why did you choose this word to represent yourself?
I chose the word freedom to represent myself because “free” is what I feel myself to be and what I want to continue to be in my life. Dancing is the simplest way I use to express what I feel and to externalise the world within me, to free myself from all those fears and insecurities that oppress and crush me. Through dance, I am able to free myself and let off steam. I think that dancers speak through the bodys, and our movements can convey a message much better than words. When there are no more words left, movement can continue to express what we have inside. I believe that through dancing the body is no longer a barrier or a limitation, but becomes one with the mind, which I reckon is the greatest freedom of all. We can express with our movements and our body all that we can imagine. We must strive to transmit everything we have to the public: we must excite and make people feel all the emotions that we experience every day; we must make the audience rejoice but also suffer; we must make it feel real pain. Besides technique, this is most important quality for a dancer. “Freedom” is my word also because I am seeing many magnificent, incredible places that I would never have imagined being able to visit one day, such as Australia and New Zealand. I feel really free. Every day I have adventures and try something new. My life is definitely not at all monotonous; neither am I stuck in a rut, which is something I’ve always disliked! I feel free also in this respect, now.
To get to where you are, you had to strongly believe in yourself, in your idea, in your project: do you therefore think that believing in something with conviction always makes it possible?
Surely, to get where I am now I had to strongly believe in myself and in my goal. We always hear that we shouldn’t listen to what other people say, that we should follow our own path: this is a very important truth, which we should all keep in mind. People have often questioned what I am doing, asked me whether I am convinced of my choices: I have known that I want to dance since the very moment I set foot in a dance studio. I never took any notice of what other people had to say, I never questioned what I felt inside, I worked hard on myself. For this reason, I feel that believing in ourselves is extremely important, because no one else will do it for us. Of course, success is something ephemeral, you also need a bit of luck, you have to seize the moment, and so on. But giving it all you have, making sacrifices, being committed to your dream comes before anything else.
Your area of origin is full of inventors, entrepreneurs, artists, writers and sportsmen who, with talent and stubbornness, dedicate every day of their lives to putting into practice what they believe in to make their dreams come true, overcoming their limits. What has the territory you come from transmitted to you? And how do you feel about it?
The country and even more the region I come from are of critical importance for me as a person. I am very patriotic and feel a very strong bond with my land: now that I am abroad, I miss Italy a lot; I miss the food, the people… I think that Italy is one of the most beautiful countries in the world, my region in particular: before me, there have been many important people who have brought the name of our area to the top. So, yes, I’m emotionally attached to it. Then of course my family has given me strong principles, such as working hard and committing to what you do every day to make your dreams come true. My family has always supported me, right from the very beginning.I also feel a very bond with my family: I am very close not only to my parents but also to my grandparents; they have always supported me, and I am incredibly grateful because without them, without my parents, nothing would have been possible.
Are you aware that yours is an “EXTRAordinary” story? And what do you think makes it truly “EXTRAordinary”?
I know my story is extraordinary, and I think that what makes it so is the passion and love for what I do. My determination to pursue this goal has also been of fundamental importance to overcome the numerous hurdles I have found along the way, and I have often wondered whether I really wanted to do this. I’ve always felt inside me that this was what I wanted to do, it has always been my dream, but the road, especially in the Academy, was hard: there were tears, and the teachers were strict, but in the end all the hard work has paid off. Now I am very happy, and looking back, I can say that I have managed to overcome all the obstacles that I found on my way and that I am where I wanted to be. Clearly, there is still a lot to do, a lot of work to be done; I am not satisfied because you can always do better. I want to make my story even more extraordinary; I want to continue to strive for what I have managed to accomplish so far, of which I am very proud, but I want to continue and achieve even higher goals..
