A promising young Red Deer ballerina has been accepted into a summer program at the Boston Ballet School.
Georgina Moore, 14, has danced since she was three, attending the conservatory program through Red Deer College and also Dance Traxx in Red Deer.
As a young child she also played soccer, but her parents David and Christine Moore knew dance would win out one day. During a break in the soccer game, as other children were grabbing water, Georgina was practising her pirouettes on the soccer pitch.
In fact, one of her ballet teachers gave her the nickname as a child of “Gina Ballerina,” which has stuck.
Georgina has taken part in The Nutcracker at RDC for a decade, playing every role from Clara to the Sugar Plum Fairy.
Most recently, she played a soldier in a professional production of The Nutcracker in Calgary. The former Camille J. Lerouge School student started attending the professional division of the School of Alberta Ballet full time in September in Calgary, where she goes to school and spends most of the rest of her time dancing.
Georgina said she enjoys dancing because ballet is both a sport and an art. “You need the mindset of an artist and the fitness of an athlete,” she said.
Her days in Calgary often start at 6 a.m. as she finishes off homework for that school day. She attends class until 2:20 p.m., before being whisked off to spend nearly two hours practising ballet, an hour practicing pointe — in the shoes many typically think of when they think of a ballerina — and often afterwards doing another class in pas-de-deux, modern or character.
All of her hard work is starting to pay off.
In January, she tried out for the Boston Ballet School while they were doing auditions in Calgary and four days later she was offered a spot in the school’s summer program. She’ll spend from June 27 to the end of July training in Boston.
Although she makes it all look easy, sometimes things don’t go as smoothly as planned.
While taking part in the American Dance Awards in Calgary in May 2008, she was doing a character ballet of Anne of Green Gables. In the midst of dancing, she forgot her choreography and proceeded to make up half the dance on the spot. She still managed to be the runner-up in the competition, although her teacher had a few questions for her afterwards.
The first night of The Nutcracker at RDC in December 2008, when she was the Sugar Plum Fairy, she was about to start her solo but the music didn’t start. Then the music came on, but it wasn’t the correct music and finally it was a blend of the wrong music with the proper score. Following the show-must-go-on tradition, Georgina started dancing and completed her performance.
“What happens on stage you just have to go with it and go with the flow,” Georgina said.
The young dancer is poised to take the leap into a professional career in the future.
sobrien@www.reddeeradvocate.com