DSC graduation: Ballet dancer stretches herself into honors student, community leader

At its best, ballet is beauty, music for the eyes.

It's also a grand deception. Beneath the grace and harmony are hours of sweat, pain and failure.

Fernanda Castillo, a 24-year-old student who has both performed and taught ballet and is graduating from Daytona State College on Tuesday, explains: "It looks easy, but being able to make it look easy is extremely challenging. It requires a lot of physical work, a lot of mental work. Ballerinas not only train their body, but we also have to train our minds."

Castillo trained and trained, then followed wherever ballet would take her. Getting to Daytona State was more than a few pirouettes away.

Guatemala: where 'Kids don't dream of becoming dancers'

Castillo grew up in Mazatenango, Guatemala, near the Pacific Ocean, a place where ballerinas don't pursue professional careers. She was different.

"A lot of people thought that we were crazy because I wanted to be a ballet dancer in Guatemala. Kids don't dream of becoming dancers. We cannot dream of becoming dancers," she said.

Guatemala is among Latin America's poorest countries, with 55% of its population living in poverty, according to the World Bank.

"My grandmother (Elsa Barrios) left rural Guatemala so my mom could go to high school. My mom graduated high school," Castillo said. And her mother, Mildre Castillo, in turn, worked "very, very hard" to support her daughter's dream.

Castillo started dancing at 4.

Her studio was in a rustic, Cold War-era military barracks, with no ballet floors, no mirrors or bars for training. But every afternoon she was there.

"My mom told me: If you're going to go to dance class, you're going to do it well and you're going to work hard," she said. It meant no hanging out with friends or birthday parties or other activities.

And she was dedicated.

In 2018, Castillo participated in the International Ballet Competition in Jackson, Mississippi.

Coming to Florida

During her time in Mississippi, Castillo took a class in the Vaganova method, and approached Zhanna Dubrovskaya, one of the instructors, to ask whether she could train with her at the European School of Performing Arts in Ormond Beach.

Dubrovskaya trained in the Vaganova method in Russia with Vera Kostrovitskaya, who learned directly from Agrippina Vaganova, author of the standard of ballet instruction, herself.

Within a couple of months, Castillo moved to Florida at age 18 and trained at the school from September 2018 to May 2019.

She lived with Hilary and Benjamin Deininger and rode a bike from their home to the studio. Castillo considers them her American family.

That year, Castillo became only the second person from her country to dance ballet in St. Petersburg, Russia, where the art form rose to prominence in the 19th century.

At age 19, she moved by herself to Chicago to train with A&A ballet school, paid for by her mother who cobbled together money through work and loans. Castillo recalls walking 20 frigid minutes from her train station to the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue each day to train from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

"It was beautiful. You know, I used to get inside of the building and there was piano playing, violin playing, ballet classes happening, acting lessons going on," Castillo said.

Being surrounded by art was inspiring. She was progressing toward her unlikely dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer.

Turning toward teaching

Along came COVID-19.

Ballet courses were shut down. She was alone in Chicago.

"My American family told me: You need to come back. So I came back to Florida and I spent 2020 here," Castillo said.

Later, her immigration attorneys advised her to return to Guatemala in 2021.

The curtain was closing on her dreams of becoming a professional ballet dancer.

Yet her love of the art remained. She got involved, first as a volunteer, with a U.S.-based nonprofit, Transformación Ballet, which teaches dance and gymnastics to children in four small villages and two orphanages on Lake Atitlán in Sololá. In her time there, Castillo rose to become the assistant director.

In 2022, the Deiningers urged her to return to the United States, and while there, a neighbor suggested she look into taking classes at Daytona State.

Enrolling in Quanta-Honors

Castillo hadn't yet started at DSC when she got an email from Benjamin Graydon, chair of the college's Quanta-Honors College, urging her to consider the program.

Acceptance into Quanta-Honors is not based on past performance but future potential, "driven by the idea that no matter a student’s starting point, that student can become an honors student," Graydon said.

The program is capped at 68 and is first-come, first-served, with no requirement except an understanding of the program's format and expectations.

"When I learned that Fernanda had grown up in Guatemala, trained as a professional dancer, and felt a passion for community service, I urged her to give Quanta-Honors a try," Graydon said.

She was a little wary, concerned that her writing and math skills wouldn't measure up, but agreed to try.

Whatever she lacked in writing and math academic preparation, Castillo brought the discipline of a dancer and the drive instilled in her by her grandmother and mother in Guatemala.

She wrote about them in her first essay.

"I worked very hard and went to the Writing Center almost three times per week, which is the limit we have," Castillo said. She also met with her tutor and took full advantage of the support services offered by DSC, which she called "vital."

She got 100% on her essay's second revision.

Another challenge was figuring out how to approach the 60 hours of community service the program requires.

Through one of the Quanta-Honors professors, Francis Gunshanan, she learned about Hope Place, the former school-turned-shelter in Daytona Beach where homeless and other displaced families can stay temporarily.

She was able to secure two grants, one for $5,500 from the Rotary Club of Downtown Ormond Beach, and the other $2,000 from the United Way of Volusia-Flagler Counties, to establish her own free ballet program, Dance for the World, and creative writing program for children residents and former residents of Hope Place.

The grants helped pay for equipment: a ballet floor, bars, mirrors and mats, as well as other supplies for creative writing and arts. Through a partnership with Dance Depot, she is able to supply the children with dance costumes. She taught courses every Friday there while completing her studies at Daytona State.

Graydon said Castillo has been inspirational to students and faculty at DSC, and impactful for the Daytona Beach community, particularly the children at Hope Place.

"She shows them how to grow and learn artistically, building confidence that they − like her − can stretch to meet high goals," Graydon said.

Castillo recently won four awards at DSC's Convocation: Quanta-Honors Outstanding Student, Writing Center Outstanding Student, Falcon Student Engagement Award and the Hall of Fame.

"(Students) see how hard she works and how passionate she is, and it’s infectious – they want to achieve more.  In addition, they see how she tries to build up the communities she belongs to, and they want to do that, too," Graydon said. "For faculty, Fernanda is a great reminder of how much potential our students have.  When we set expectations high, and then provide lots of support, students will meet those expectations – or, like Fernanda, consistently exceed them."

As of last week, Castillo was trying to decide on where to finish the final two years of her bachelor's degree. She has been accepted to Stetson University, where she earned a full-ride scholarship, and Columbia University in New York, and is awaiting more details on the offer there. She has an eye toward law school after completing her bachelor's degree, and is hoping to work professionally in the United States for a few years before returning home to Guatemala.

And she's still working hard at making it look easy, taking Vaganova Method lessons at Ormond Ballet, where she has also been training to become a ballet teacher.

Stetson Graduation: Two Ukrainian students grateful for chance to study here

ERAU Graduation: Outnumbered by men, women graduates at Embry-Riddle embraced leadership roles at the school

B-CU Graduation: Jacksonville native to earn Bethune-Cookman bachelor's degree — 20 years after starting

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Guatemalan ballerina leaps from dance career to DSC Quanta-Honors grad