ART
By Joy White
Photos courtesy of Anna Glushko
Anna Glushko’s childhood dream was to dance ballet. Now she is sharing that dream with Saipan as the instructor and owner of Glushko’s Academy of Performing Arts. Glushko was born in Vladivostok, Russia. She has been in the Northern Marina Islands for about 16 years and is married to Dr. Gene Eagle-Oden. “Being on stage is a magical experience. Being part of a theatrical act becomes an addiction that stays with you forever,” Glushko says. “It’s not for everybody, and it also requires a lot of sacrifice. The energy that audience gives you back is powerful and the greatest gift that performers ever receive. It is the most exciting part and the biggest reward for all your hard work.” When she was a young girl, she had a burning energy that her mother wanted to be used in a positive way, Glushko says. First, she tried gymnastics, but over time the distance from the gymnastics school from her home became too much. Instead, Glushko applied to the state-run ballet school that was a 10-minute walk away from her home. Although state-run schools at the time were free, Glushko had to apply to the program and pass three rounds of exams and compete with hundreds of other kids to be accepted. “It was a requirement to be naturally flexible, very fit, with strong bones and be good looking,” Glushko says. “Even at 8 years old I had a good sense of music and rhythm. At 8 years old, acceptance into the ballet academy was the opportunity of my life.” Glushko let her talent shine and was accepted into the academy. She made a name for herself at the academy, which helped launch her career as a professional ballerina. “I don’t remember my very first performance, but I remember my first solo performance when I was 12 years old,” she says. The performance got her noticed by her teachers and she began
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receiving special attention. “[That] was the beginning of my way up toward being a true soloist performer,” she says. She graduated first in her class at the ballet academy and was hired as a professional dancer at 17 years old. Later she became the prima ballerina of a ballet company in Vladivostok, then the head of choreography for Olympic ballet schools in Irkutsk and Vladivostok. However, the road was not always easy. “The hardest part for all ballerinas was that this was the time of great financial challenges during the transition from Soviet to a market-driven Russia. The pay was still Soviet-era pay, and it was absolutely impossible to make living from being a young ballerina,” she says. Many of her friends had quit ballet entirely. “Just to live, I had to work two full-time jobs,” Glushko says. She worked these long, exhausting hours seven days a week and had no time for a personal life. Despite the hardship, Glushko says she has never thought of doing any other profession. “I am lucky because I became somebody that I chose to become, and I have loved being a ballerina all my life,” she says. In her post-ballet dance career, Glushko is extremely gratified and fulfilled as a ballet instructor. “In my opinion, the art of ballet is the very hardest of all arts. Besides it being an art form, it is also requires very hard physical activity that requires several hours of training each and every day of your life or you lose your edge,” Glushko says. “At the same time, ballet must appear to the audience as if it’s effortless. In the art of ballet, the body is an instrument that has to be tuned all the time, kept in perfect shape. Dancers have to sacrifice a lot to be that perfect instrument. When you are a professional ballet dancer, you no longer belong to yourself, you belong to your art; you are your art.”