G C C E l Va q u e r o G CC _ E l V a q
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el.vaquero.gcc elvaq.gcc Wednesday, December 4, 2019 Glendale Community College Student Newspaper
Volume 114 | Issue 6
Dancing in the Spotlight: Tatiana Beverly
ATHLETE SPOTLIGHT: Tatiana Beverly proves that ballerinas are athletes in their own right, demonstrating an incredible discipline to master her craft.
By Gabriel Ponce Staff Writer
Think about what separates a performer from an athlete. Would you consider someone’s way of art to be seen the same way as an athlete’s? If I told you that ballerinas weren’t so different than soccer players or football players, you would probably think I was insane. As I sat with Tatiana Beverly, I see a really cool, laid-back person who enjoys going to Disneyland during her free time. But as she speaks more on what she does here on campus, I realize how intense being a part of ballet can be. We view athletes as these people who have endurance, strength, and usually are part of some type of team. The first picture that comes to people’s minds of ballerinas are these beautiful humans that are gentle, but with that comes the same work as any so-called athlete. Here at GCC, Beverly shows us how being a ballerina is
just as tough, if not tougher, than sports played here on campus. She achieves that and more to be the best she can be in what she does. At a young age, Beverly started training in gymnastics. It took a couple years before she crossed paths with ballet. She was good at it and was moving up in techniques and skills fast. It wasn’t until the age of 10 when she started taking it seriously. “Eventually ballet became an escape from reality,” Beverly stated. She has pursued ballet all her life, but in between has also sung in the choir and performed in musicals in her school, John Burroughs High School. Teamwork in every sport is the key to being successful, this is the same with ballet. In Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” there is a piece called “Dance of the Little Swans” where the women link arms and dance exactly the same. “We have to trust each other and have good coordination to be successful together,” Beverly stated. “Miscalculate
a step in a performance, you can cause an injury to self or your partner.” There are physical dangers, however. In her time practicing ballet, Beverly has experienced a small knee injury but was able to recover from it quickly. If you try to compare a ballerina to another athlete you might ask yourself how a beautiful young lady can come close to matching up the strengths of these other athletes. But ballet performers need to have core and leg strength. They aren’t injury prone. Think about being en pointe, which is when the dancer stands and balances on the tips of their toes. This of course requires great leg strength. Now imagine doing a pirouette, which is a spin while en pointe. “We have to train our bodies everyday … We train our bodies everyday and make it do things it is not naturally supposed to do.” Also while doing this they don’t have much to protect them, ballet shoes hardly have any padding to protect their feet. Beverly has worked on pieces where
Gabriel Ponce Staff Photographer
she has had to dance continuously for ten minutes. It seems pretty intense, but as she says, “Sometimes we have pieces that go for ten minutes, and right after we go on stage again … We have to make sure [the] next piece is even stronger.” This really shows the amount of endurance her body has. A ballet dancer like her has to spend almost 45 minutes to an hour on just stretching. From there on she has to go through a list of movements including plie, tendu, and Rond de Jambe. [“Dancing” is continued on page 2]
In This Issue
News. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-3
Features .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Opinion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5-6
Sports .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Entertainment . . . . . . . . . . . 8