She gave the videos her undivided attention. As her gaze remained unbroken for hours, with each graceful motion of the dancers burning into her eyes and then into her memory, Ariana Lordge would study these different styles of dance to help with her own artistic performance.

Watching numerous YouTube videos wasn’t the only thing that Lordge would do to improve her ballet.

“I participated in summer intensive ballet programs with Sacramento Ballet, Capitol Ballet and American Ballet Theatre of New York. There I met and trained from ballet masters and mistresses who are  well-known in the world of dance. I used their feedback and corrections to better my technique as well as performance presentation,” Lordge said.

It all started when Lordge was about three years old and she bravely stepped onto a studio floor where she discovered that ballet was her road to take.

“I remember that the studio that had both gymnastics and ballet. I was never a fan of of heights but I was always really artistic when it came to dance. So I stopped gymnastics and focused solely on ballet,” Lordge said.

Fifteen years later, Lordge practices about four to five days a week, and that’s excluding weekends where she could have rehearsals. Now a lead dancer with Placer Theatre Ballet, she has performed many principal roles in plays such as The Nutcracker, Coppelia, and Snow White. She describes what she got out of all of this.

“Performing these roles allowed me to branch out further in artistic performance, as well as challenging myself with new choreography,” Lordge said.

On audition day, Lordge makes sure she get’s a good night rest. Upon waking up, she hurries to eat a nutritious breakfast before preparing for the rehearsal to come. Instead of frantically dialing numbers on her phone to chat with her friends, she becomes deeply quiet and tries to free her mind from distractions.

“I need to get focused up until the audition starts. Once I step into an audition, I open my mind to my environment, the teachers and fellow dancers so I can surpass the tension and freely dance with no distractions,” Lordge said.

She follows this same routine for every audition day, so that when it comes to her performance she can do the best she can. However, there’s no question,with school and being very involved into ballet, that Ariana is one busy individual.

“Juggling school and dance is definitely a hassle, but with good time management, and thats something that I am still improving upon, it is possible to manage them both. With school, homework and practice, I am busy all the time,”  Lordge said.

Because of this, having a social event with friends is a rarity, but she does the best she can to fit those into her schedule. Having to sacrifice time with friends and constantly practicing, people may wonder; why stay committed to dance?

“I dance because it is my freedom of expression. I have the opportunity to express my emotions through dance which is something that I can do so much easier than having a conversation with someone. I also love ballet specifically  because it lets me experience the color wheel of human emotions; love, betrayal, even death in just two hours on stage. I’ve had people come up to me after performances, smiling, laughing and even crying, and that is the most rewarding thing in the world,” Lordge said.

by KALEEN SINGH