The Akhmedova Ballet Academy’s most recent spring show, “Voices of Spring”, showcased two originally choreographed productions as well as some featured group and solo pieces. The first piece was called A Magical Night at the Ball and was choreographed by Mme. Akhmedova, the Artistic Director. The second piece was choreographed by Jessica Novakovich, our in-house choreographer, and was called “The Twelve Rooms”. The Twelve Rooms was about a girl named Mila who goes through the rooms of her emotions and stages that she comes across in her life’s journey. She goes through the rooms of hope, doubt, joy, angst, resilience, peace, misery, passion, insanity, empathy, and change. From there, she takes all the lessons that she learns to go into the room of a new beginning and is surrounded by all her past emotions and learns to look towards whatever the future may bring.

My name is Eliana and I had the privilege of embodying the character of Mila in The Twelve Rooms. Throughout all the rehearsals in preparation for the show, I learned to explore her character and found ways to try to make her role alive to the audience. I truly enjoyed learning how to step into the character and being able to evoke her emotions as I danced through her story. Learning how to explore my emotions through Mila allowed me to be more in touch with myself and allowed me to get bolder when evoking emotions on stage.

Through these rehearsals, I was not only able to better my artistry, but I was also improving my ability to remember choreography. Before this show, I always had a lot of choreography to remember for competitions and other performances, but never to the scale that I had during this performance. I learned new things about myself, such as how I best pick up choreography and how I best remember corrections and changes in the dances. I learned that reviewing the dances in my head, as well as marking, or slightly doing the movements but not to the fullest extent, at least twice a day helped me to remember the choreography. Constant review helped my mind, my body, and my emotions to become muscle memory by the time it was performance day.

At the performance, I was excited to share all the work that we as a studio had put in to perform for the audience. Even though I was still a little nervous backstage, I remember telling myself that no matter what happens, I am doing this to make the audience “feel something”. Even though ballet takes a lot of skill and strength, it is much more because dancers get to share their hard work as a form of art to stir something in the audience and leave them with something that they did not have before watching the performance. I believe that dance is a form of art that should be shared, and it is a way of expression that shows the beauty and life of movement. Throughout the performance when I was on stage, I was able to truly feel the emotions instead of pasting them onto my face like a blank screen. Dancing on stage is sometimes nerve-racking, but as I perform more, I have learned to love performing. I have realized that performing is not about getting things perfect but more about sharing my love and passion for the art form. This performance experience felt almost out of body as it felt healing to become someone else on stage. It felt freeing to share my emotions for myself, the audience, my parents, and teachers who have worked so hard to help support and guide me through my journey dancing. ~ Eliana