2 days in the life of Alexandra: portrait of a young dancer - San Francesco Ballet School Student 17-year-old Alexandra Gonzalez of Colombia - Illustration

Dance Magazine, Nov, 1996 by Caitlin Sims

Alexandra Gonzalez is a seventeen-year-old from Colombia, South America, enrolled at San Francisco Ballet School. Like most American teenagers, she attends a local high school, but Alexandra goes only to morning classes and spends the rest of the day in the ballet studio. For the past two years she has lived in a dormitory at the University of San Francisco. To realize her dream of joining San Francisco Ballet, Alexandra has given up the comfort and familiarity of her home, family, language, and culture. From May 15 to 17, she and her classmates prepared for the school's annual workshop performances. Her daily routine provides a glimpse into the intensity of the daily life of a dancer working to become a professional.

6:25 a.m. University of San Francisco, Phelan Hall

I wake up at six every day, and when I am rehearsing for performances, like Nutcracker or the school performance, I don't get home until 8:30, so it's a really long day. I was born in Miami, but lived in Bogota until I came to San Francisco.

My ballet teachers in Colombia knew that San Francisco would be a really good place, because their son, Felipe Diaz, is in the company here. I came first for a summer program in 1992, and again for the summer in 1994. The second time I stayed into the fall.

7:30 a.m. George Washington High School

I love math. I know it's weird, because usually people don't like math, but it's one of my best subjects. I'm also taking biology and English. Because it's not my first language, English has been hard, especially writing papers and reading books. Next year, I might study by correspondence. This year, I thought it was nice to meet people and to have a teacher help me while I got used to English.

A friend of mine knows Spanish, but we always end up speaking English because I have forgotten some words in Spanish. When I went home, my dad said I have a Spanish accent, like from Spain. So I've totally changed. And I know I have a little accent in English too.

12:50 p.m. Advances Class, SFB School

I love adagios because I am a really sentimental person, so I like to express what I feel. And I love jumping, I guess because it's not too hard for me. Turning is harder for mer because of the shape of my legs. They're hyper-extended, and it's hard to control your balance when you have hyperextended legs. But I mostly like the whole class, until turns. Sometimes I just have to get through them.

1:20 p.m. Advanced Class

I really like my teachers, like Ricardo [Bustamante], and I think that the training in the school is really good. I'm hoping to get into this company; that's why I am here.

2:15 p.m. Rehearsal, Christensen Studio

Sometimes my friend Leah [Slayen] and I give each other a massage while we're waiting to rehearse. Usually I am really close to my friends, but sometimes when one person gets chosen to do better parts or more than someone else, it's hard. But I think that is really natural. It doesn't only happen in ballet, it's everywhere. If you get a better job than your friend or you're doing something better, someone will always think, "Oh, I wanted that."

When I first got here I didn't have trouble making friends, but it was a different kind of friendship than I had with my friends in Colombia. I was in the same school for seven years, a private all girls school, and we'd known each other since we were really young, in first grade. We grew up together.

But Colombia is really far away, and it's really expensive to go there. I got to go last year after the summer, but this year I can't go because I'm going to Pacific Northwest Ballet for the summer. I hope that it will be fun: Lola [de Avila] said it was a good place to go. In the brochure, they said that they would give modern, character, and jazz, and I like to take those classes. I hear it rains a lot in Seattle though.

I might go to see my mom in Miami before going to Seattle. I have a sister who is twenty-one and goes to university, and a brother who is turning eleven this Friday. He takes karate and violin. He started taking ballet, and he liked it and had the perfect body for it, but one day he had an accident in class! He didn't want to see the other kids again, so he stopped dancing.

6:45 p.m. Tech Rehearsal, Palace of Fine Arts

The three pieces we are doing for the workshop performances are really different. I love Helgi [Tomasson]'s piece. Sometimes it's the last rehearsal I have and I can be so tired, but when it comes to that rehearsal, I find more energy. The music and the choreography and the energy all come together. It's a little bit more modern than the other ones, but still classical. The lifts that I do with Nick [Adel, they're different and I'm not used to doing those steps, so I get nervous about that sometimes.

11:00 p.m. Phelan Hall

After rehearsal I go home to my dorm. My room has sunflowers everywhere because I love sunflowers.

The dorm has rules that at a certain time the doors will be closed, but I have keys so I can come in later. Usually I close the door and do my assignments. I have to discipline myself. I like the dorm; it's pretty comfortable, but next year I think I'm going to live in an apartment with friends from ballet.