Sacrifice and the dreams of a very young dancer: Lucia Scalas, from Pistoia to Vienna
from Letizia Porcu
PISTOIA – Fourteen years old and a great desire to dance: Lucia Scalas brings a little bit of Pistoia to the Vienna State Opera Ballet Academy.
This is a story made of dreams and sacrifices, those same sacrifices that allowed her to see her dreams come true at a very young age.
Lucia has been studying dance since she was four years old and in 2022 celebrated its tenth year of edition for this beautiful discipline in a very particular way: at the beginning of September she was admitted to study at the Ballettakademie der Wiener Staatsoper, the Ballet Academy of the Vienna State Opera.
Embarking on such an important and demanding journey at the age of fourteen, leaving behind things that smell of home: family, friends, school, the city where you were born and raised. This Lucia has always known and in order to pursue her dream of becoming a professional dancer she has “brought into play” everything she could.
After a preparation course at the Centro Arte Danza dance school in Pistoia, where she lectures for four hours every day, her teacher Rosaria Di Sessa made her auditions and at the beginning of September Lucia went to study at the Academy of Vienna.
“When Rosaria told me they had taken me – explains Lucia – I couldn’t believe it, I even started crying but then I realized it was all true. It was as if all my sacrifices had been paid off. “
Doing four hours of dance every day means having to leave something behind: “I had to sacrifice friendships – continues Lucia – because at school I wanted to do well and when I didn’t go to dance I studied, so I had to give up going out with the friends”.
Sometimes, when one is so young, peers having different passions do not understand, and friendships risk being ruined, but Lucia was lucky enough to have people around her who understood and encouraged her to dance towards her dream.
“At the Academy every day from 14:30 to 18, except Saturdays and Sundays – he explains – and every morning there is school, my schoolmates are the same ones with whom I then teach dance.”
The very young dancer concludes her story by saying that there has never been a moment when she regretted having chosen this path: the desire to dance and become a professional dancer has always overcome the effort and sacrifices needed to get there. And faced with so much passion and tenacity of her at only fourteen, we can not help but wish her to continue to pursue her dream, one “grand jete” after another.