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Performing with the pros: young dancers gain professional experience with national companies.

Article Excerpt
Nervous excitement smelled like hairspray in the children's dressing room of the Kennedy Center Opera House, where two dozen girls waited for their call to places. After their costumes were buttoned and zipped, and lipstick applied, all these budding ballerinas could do was lacquer up their hair. Two chaperoning morns asked them to can it on the hairspray. The fumes were getting toxic.

Twenty-four girls open and close Balanchine's 1962 A Midsummer Night's Dream, which New York City Ballet performed this March during its annual engagement in Washington, D.C. Rather than bring young dancers down from New York, NYCB auditioned girls locally. This was a priceless opportunity for students to taste the demands required to make it in the ballet world. Pink-hued fantasies about ballet's beauty and grace were quickly dispelled by the long hours, hard work, and incessant repetition that a professional performance...

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