Sugar Plum Fairy heads to NYC: Yarmouth Port teen to train at prestigious ballet school
Heather Arrascue warns she’s trying not to cry as she recalls her family’s recent Thanksgiving dinner. Each member shared what they were grateful for, and 14-year-old Victoria’s answer was connected to the ballet dancing that has been her life focus for years.
“Victoria said, ‘I'm grateful that my whole family is supporting my dream,’” Arrascue remembers. “She is really sweet.”
The latest step toward Victoria’s dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer is starting classes this month with American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, for which she was chosen by audition. The Yarmouth Port teen was one of just about 70 students chosen for this year out of about 5,000 applicants, according to information her mother got from the school. Victoria will take a few weeks of online classes (due to COVID-19 concerns) before moving to New York City with her mother at the start of February for in-person training.
“This is a really, really big deal,” says Victoria’s teacher, Melissa Hayes Heart, founder of Reaching Heart School of Ballet in West Harwich. The ABT program selects students “who really, really look promising.”
So just weeks after dancing lead roles of the Sugar Plum Fairy and Dew Drop Fairy for the Reaching Heart’s holiday “Nutcracker” show, Victoria is launching four years of intensive dance training — starting with multiple hours six days a week — and four years of academics in a New York high school for performing-arts students.
What is a Cape Cod-centric 'Nutcracker'?: Check out the Turning Pointe dancers in Falmouth
A ballet career is the hoped-for endpoint.
“I really wanted to do this (school) because it's a really great opportunity and it can lead to (being a) professional dancer and that’s really my dream” and has been since age 11, Victoria says. “I’ve always really loved dancing since I was little. I feel like I can just really express myself when I'm dancing and it’s just a lot of fun.”
Living her dream
While some people close to Victoria have worried that the high-honors student isn’t headed to college, her mother says this is simply a different path.
Being chosen for the New York program “is just an honor. It’s not like many people can dance in a small town and go on and do something like this,” Arrascue says. “I say ‘Don’t worry about (Victoria) not going to (college) because she’s living her dream, she's living her passion. She is going to do something that not many people get to do.’”
Arrascue describes Victoria as “very serious and very dedicated,” and recalls Victoria’s kindergarten teacher crying after watching Victoria in last month’s “Nutcracker” performance. “She said, ‘All (Victoria) used to say was how much she wanted to dance and be a dancer and now I’m seeing it.’”
Victoria started taking dance classes at age 3, moving over to Reaching Heart a few years later. Victoria “was one of those girls who came to me at 7 years old and I was like, ‘Wow, there is a lot of talent here,’” Heart says. “She’s also the kindest, sweetest, most understated girl. Not braggy at all.”
Literally jaw-dropping: Cape woman creates 7-foot Nutcracker costume as pandemic project
Arrascue remembers a realization that this might be more than an after-school hobby while watching her daughter before a class. “Honestly, it wasn't her dancing at all, it was in … these warmups before they dance, and the way she held herself, and her poise. It was really beautiful. It sounds so weird, but I just looked at her and that was, like, The Moment. I said, ‘Wow.’”
Victoria’s dedication to dance has in recent years involved a couple of hours of classes five days a week, with homework done for hours in the evenings to maintain high grades. She won some dance competitions and for the past four summers, she has auditioned for and won a spot at the five-week intensive dance program at the School of American Ballet in New York City, which was founded by George Balanchine.
“It’s an honor to get into something like that,” Arrascue says. “The fact that she’s gotten in the last four years and she’s done it over the summer, with five weeks away, shows her dedication and how she’s been honing her craft at such a young age.”
A family's support
Besides getting her to and from, and paying for, the many dance lessons, Victoria’s family gave her a birthday gift two years ago of her own dance studio in their basement, complete with Marley dance floor, barre and mirrors. The timing proved fortuitous, as Victoria had a studio to practice in when the pandemic hit and classes had to go online.
The latest family change is Arrascue and her mother, who works for I.T. Works! In West Barnstable, moving to New York City, while Victoria’s father, Enrique, a captain in the Centerville-Osterville-Marstons Mills Fire Department, and 18-year-old brother stay home and her sister continues studying at Roger Williams College in Rhode Island.
“I'm really grateful for everything that they've done for me, 'cause they've driven me to dance every day, and believed that I could one day become a professional and they've just done everything in their power to support me and what I want to do,” Victoria says of her family. “And all my friends and my teacher have been super supportive of me, too.”
“It’s a big sacrifice,” Heart says of the Arrascues’ efforts. “When a child has so much talent, it’s amazing when the family recognizes this is a big deal. It’s very exciting.”
Related: With internationally known performers, dance festival marks debut of Truro outdoor stage
Making the complicated life schedule work is clearly done out of love, but Victoria’s mother says her dancing daughter has also earned this next opportunity in multiple ways.
“I know she's mine, but she is a really lovely girl and if anybody deserved it, it would be her. She just throws good vibes out there.”
Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll can be reached at kdriscoll@capecodonline.com. Follow on Twitter: @KathiSDCCT.
This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Yarmouth Port 14-year-old dancer to train at American Ballet Theatre
