Colleyville teen heads to New York to pursue dance dream

Gillian Fitz, a 17-year-old from Colleyville, left for New York City recently to pursue her dream of becoming a professional ballerina.

Fitz will spend the academic year in the Ellison Ballet Professional Training Program. For four to five hours a day, she will study ballet. She earned the spot while training with Ellison over the summer.

While in the Big Apple, Fitz will complete her senior year at Grapevine-Colleyville’s iUniversity Prep, taking classes online around her dance schedule.

The online program “has been a great thing for me,” Fitz said. “It offers me a very flexible schedule, so I don’t have to be in school every day from 8 to 3.”

She developed a passion for ballet at age 9 after performing in front of a crowd. Fitz has been training with the Marina Almayeva School of Classical Ballet in Hurst since she was 8.

Being a ballerina takes a lot of physical and mental preparation.

“It’s really hard, and there’s lots of blood, sweat and tears,” Fitz said. “You need a lot of stamina with the physicality of ballet.”

Then there’s what you need to do outside the studio, such as studying dance on videos and learning the music.

She hopes to earn a spot in a professional company after one or two years of training with Ellison. Her dream role is to play Aurora in Sleeping Beauty and her dream job is to work with either the Dutch National Ballet in Amsterdam or the San Francisco Ballet.

“I just enjoy that rush of performing in front of a live audience,” she said.

This story was originally published September 25, 2015 at 11:40 AM with the headline "Colleyville teen heads to New York to pursue dance dream."