I first started dance at the age of 2. Being a single mother, my mom put me in the after school ballet and tap classes. After doing this for three school years, I told my mom I wanted to keep dancing. At the age of 5, she signed me up for classes at Dmitri Kulev Classical Ballet Academy. At the time, they had been open for a little while, and they had only put on one performance. It was after their post-performance break that I took my first class. A decade later, I was still with DKCBA, and the studio had grown to become quite a well-known and established dance school.

     Within these years at DKCBA, I performed over 30 Nutcrackers, many spring recitals, and quite a few OCBT (our company division) performances. I had the opportunity of performing pieces by George Balanchine, such as Serenade and Who Cares?, and was able to take master classes with Anna Tikhomirova, Artem Ovcharenko, Misty Copeland, Larissa Saveliev, Gennadi Saveliev, Michelle Gifford, Natalya Lushina-Ziegler, and Liuba Kozereva Paterson. Although I never was huge on competitions, I did also participate in them for a few years- with almost all the pieces I was in placing first in our age category and first overall. I had also, by this time, been accepted into the Bolshoi Ballet Academy.

     I was 15 when I was accepted into the Academy after completing my second Bolshoi Ballet Academy summer intensive. From the age of 15-18, I studied at the Academy in Moscow, Russia. Teachers I had during my time as a Bolshoi Ballet Academy student included Gusev Georgiy Konstantinovich, Marianne Maksimovna, Kovalenko Lyudmila Vasilevna, Tamara Mihaylovna, Sergeeva Nika Vyacheslavovna, Tolstaya Nina Mihaylovna, Mirza Olga Antonovna, Kazeeva Evgeniya Sergeevna, Ryzhakov Ilya Mikhailovich, Ivanova Svetlana Anatolevna, Kulikova Vera Nikolaevna, and Revich Natalya Igorevna. In 2018, I became the first Mexican American to graduate from the Academy. To learn more about my time at the Academy, click here for the blog I kept or here for my YouTube I had during my training.

     Although I no longer train pre-professionally, ballet and dance still have a special place in my heart and my time spent as a dancer has led me to where I am now. Dance fostered an interest in nutrition, and this is what eventually led me to decide in pursuing a path in dietetics. I hope to one day become a sports nutrition intern and work closely with dancers to help achieve a healthier, less-negative, mindset around body image within the dance community through focusing on fueling dancers for improved performance while maintaining realistic and healthy goals that are met through informed decisions and sustainable habits.