- Hi, my name is Petra Conti.
I'm an International Principal dancer
and I'm gonna take you through everything I do in a day.
Being a dancer for me is part of who I am.
It's my lifestyle. It's how I present myself.
I don't stop being a dancer once I'm out of the studio.
Good morning.
It's 6:45.
I have Mischu
and Breda
and,
he's sleeping.
The first thing I do is feed the cats
because they will not allow me even to go to the bathroom.
No? You don't want it?
All right, nevermind.
If it's a day where I don't work,
I don't even put makeup on.
I like to give my skin some time off.
Because of my work, I sweat a lot.
I would rather, you know, go clean.
I like the clean look.
Another thing that I have to do every day
is do the bun or the twist.
I am an Italian that as a weird Italian.
I don't drink alcohol, wine. I don't like it.
And I don't really like coffee, which is an Italian thing.
But, but I have to, because it gives me that boost.
So I drink that little espresso and then,
because I need a lot of energy,
so I need carbohydrates.
A lot of pasta, a lot of pizza, a lot of bread.
So bread in the morning with whatever
Nuttela, also Italian.
[speaker chuckles]
Or some, lately something more salty with some cheese.
I started ballet when I was 11.
So now it's, I think it's 22 years.
And my mom and my sister were ballerinas, were dancers.
So I thought every family, you know, is a dance family.
I didn't think it was weird that my mom would sit in a split
sometimes and read books for me.
I felt kind of at ease, you know lifting the legs
and dancing around and it was super fun for me.
It was never something that was out of my comfort zone.
In 2013, I decided together with my husband
to move to America and challenge ourselves, you know,
a new journey, a new career path,
and we became Principals of Boston Ballet.
That was completely a different experience.
In Italy the way you're a Principal dancer,
you're a Principal dancer until you retire.
And in America, it's, everything is very different.
You get contracts every year.
You can be renewed or not renewed.
You really need to work hard.
Today, I'm a Principal dancer with Los Angeles Ballet
and I also travel internationally as a guest artist.
Currently I live sort of far away from the studio.
So it takes me more than an hour to drive.
Ready.
Once I enter the ballet studio
I sit down and listen to my body, whatever I need to do.
If it's just stretching,
if it's all ready, start doing some abs or if it just like
slow warming up of every little part of my body.
And then I prep my pointe shoes.
I check if they're ready to be used, or if not
I just fix them a little bit.
I take care of my feet. Before I start my regular work day,
I massage and scrape the bottom of the foot very often now.
That helps with the circulation, with the blood flow
and sort of helps recovery and warming up the feet.
I tape whatever I need to tape.
If I have some blisters or whatever.
Pointe shoes are like tires for a racing car.
More than taking care of my feet,
I would take care of the pointe shoe.
So in between rehearsals, I would fix the shoe.
This is the brand that I'm currently using.
It's a new pointe shoe.
It's very hard
[clicking sound]
and it doesn't move at all.
And this is an old pointe shoe
which is flexible because I have cut that sole.
I put jet glue in here
and of course I put ribbons, an elastic.
It takes me about one hour and a half for every pair.
And they "die" in about one day or two.
So imagine how many hours during a week I have to spend.
It's sort of my second job.
The ballet class starts at 9:30 until 11,
which is the warm-up
which is sort of a meditation for ballet dancers.
I feel like listening to your own body
is really important and ballet class it's that medicine
that we need to take every day to feel better.
It's like vitamins for us.
We do bar.
We do Center. The hardest part of the ballet classes
at the end where we really start to push
and get that stamina going.
If I don't push for a couple days, I lose my stamina.
So everything becomes harder.
I get out of breath, much easier.
There is a saying in the ballet world
that if for one day you don't do ballet, you feel it.
If for two days you don't do ballet class,
the teacher sees it.
If for three days you don't do ballet class,
the audience notice it.
During my career at Boston Ballet,
at some point I started feeling a little bit
not well.
In 2016, they diagnosed a kidney cancer.
So I had to go through surgery and recovery
and it sort of changed my way of,
you know seeing myself as a dancer.
It changed my mentality,
changed the way I,
[deep inhale sound]
I lived my everyday life.
You know, I had this moment,
I performed my last Swan Lake
together with my husband at Boston Ballet.
And then one week later
I got into surgery for a kidney cancer.
And that moment, that last performance, I thought
this is the last time I'm gonna do this.
This is, I should really enjoy it.
And that was, I feel like sometimes we're so stressed
because we have such a big responsibility.
We dance in front of thousand of people.
You know, everyone is looking at us, from the troop
from the backstage people, company members.
So that big responsibility sometimes can be too much.
So we get a little bit overwhelmed.
And I was, a lot of time
I was really stressed to go on stage
but that last performance of my Swan Lake before surgery
I sort of understood why I am doing this because I love it.
And it is who I am. It's my life.
And I danced like it was the last time for me
and the dancing for the,
like it's for your last time,
it makes it completely different.
It makes it so much more magical.
I am back to dancing, which I didn't know at that time.
And I'm actually a better dancer now.
I call myself the Petra Conti 2.0 because I feel like
now that I've experienced that suffering and that like
[speaker gasps]
fear of losing everything, you start enjoying it more.
So I started really loving it and not being so afraid
and really giving it all at every performance.
And now I have this big responsibility to share
with my fans, with the audience
that there is so much in this life to be happy about
to enjoy every single moment that we get to have
because it can really,
[poof]
it can go away like this.
If we don't love our body the way it is today
we might not have a chance tomorrow.
As dancers we have the mirror every time in front us.
Sometimes it can be, you know, a love, hate experience.
But now I believe it's really really important to...
appreciate who you are today.
Ballet is not natural.
It's not a sport like others.
It's all unnatural, starting from the turnout
that we need to create. The rotation of the hips
and of the legs,
outwards which naturally will cause you to fall
because you're not stable.
So we need to create that whole stability from scratch.
And so instead of using the biggest muscles
which are the quads, we have strong quads
but we also have extremely strong inner thighs
and hamstrings which are the two most important muscles
that we use in the turnout.
Of course, in ballet core is the core.
Core is so important not only when you're doing partnering
but also when you're doing pirouettes and everything,
all the balancing exercises
especially because we are on point.
So another very important aspect for a ballerina like me
is to have super strong feet.
I needed to develop feet that feel like hens
and that's what I still work on.
Sometimes I try to grab stuff with my toes.
If I don't have that energy and that smoothness
and that strength and that power,
I cannot only not jump properly, roll down through the foot
but I also cannot dance on pointe shoe properly.
So there's a whole preparation and it takes years
for a ballerina to be able to wear a pointe shoes.
- One and two, good and now walk with her.
Heel and da, da, da, da, da, da.
- There's rehearsal weeks and performance weeks.
So rehearsal weeks is kind of easier
a less stressful week for me, where I get to rehearse,
prepare for the next upcoming performances
and also teach at Pasadena Civic Ballet.
So my schedule is really full
but it's of course less stressful
because I don't have any performances this week.
And when I have a performance week
I get really like,
[Pfoom]
like performance mode.
So I really focus on my character.
I study again and again, whoever I am, my role,
the personality that I have to bring on stage and you know
the technique that I have to excel at when I'm on stage.
I don't even answer phone calls sometimes.
I'm really just focused on performance mode.
What I like about my work is that every day is different.
There's not such a day where I have the same hours.
One day I can have just two, three hours with my partner
where I just would rehearse my solos,
my variations, the partnering, the Pas de deux.
Some other days I might have on top of that
another couple hours with the Core de Ballet
which is a total different story
because then you have, you know, the ensemble
the professional dancers that are also part of the ballet.
And so we try to put the whole ballet together.
And that's also a little bit more stressful
because I have to already perform in front of the company.
In between rehearsals,
I take a break and have some snacks or a quick lunch.
Always being hungry and, you know,
needing something or some banana or whatever.
In between rehearsals, if I have some time off,
I would go to my training room
that we have, Los Angeles Ballet,
and I work on things that I need for that day.
Massage or physical therapy is really part of the game.
So my legs get super tired.
My feet gets super sore.
So sometimes I would have to do ice bath
on the feet to sort of keep that inflammation down.
Leading up to performance of course,
the rehearsal week changes. It becomes more hectic.
So repeating that variation, that solo
and getting all the Core de Ballet together
in a studio rehearsal with everybody,
sometimes already with costumes to start getting the feeling
or help the partner understand
if the costume is slippery or not.
You get into that performance mode.
My job is a big responsibility as a Principal dancer.
I need to care a lot.
So of course I am stressed.
It's not a paralyzing stress
because that would be a disaster.
If I went on stage and be paralyzed from the stress
of having sometimes even 15,000 people looking at me
then I would not be able to do this job.
The best thing for me actually
is that moment when I enter that stage
and I kind of break the ice, and I like to say
I feel like a fish in the water.
Finally, it's my thing. I get,
[deep breath]
I get so inspired by the audience.
Sometimes it's three hours of performance
where our character evolves
and that's the most exciting thing.
It's that process, which is so interesting
but only happens a hundred percent in front of the audience.
I can only "fake it" in rehearsal, but once I'm on stage
and I really perform, the magic happens,
I am not anymore just Petra.
I am Petra Giselle,
Petra Odette Odile Swan Lake, or Petra whatever.
I become that other person.
And that's the best thing I love about ballet.
And what I say every day is that,
for a Principal dancer of my caliber,
I never look for perfection
because perfection doesn't exist.
Not only in ballet, but in this world.
We are human beings and humans are imperfect
and that whats make us great and beautiful.
And in our art, that imperfection makes us unique.
And a one and a two and three and point.
I believe actually that since I started teaching
I became better ballet dancer.
Just explaining every single movement
and noticing all the errors,
I understand much more because I can tell what's the problem
with some pirouettes and stuff.
I can also apply it to myself.
And I absolutely adore teaching,
adore sharing my experiences,
my expertise, my knowledge.
I think it's gonna be something that I'm gonna be doing
until the day I die.
Pasadena Civic Ballet is very nice to us, to me
because I'm not only faculty like the main faculty,
but I also can use the studios.
So I can really, if I feel like I need to work more
on things that I haven't worked, you know
just work on one more extra step.
And most importantly, I can keep working
with my husband Eris on new choreographies.
The only time to work on these things is usually at night
or during my day off.
So I'm preparing a new pair of pointe shoes for tomorrow.
It's very quite usual that we arrive at home
and then we finally do dinner
and rest.
After dinner my job is not done
because normally I would have to prepare
my pointe shoes for the next day.
And sometimes I wanna see how they feel.
So I wear them.
So in the middle of a movie, you could see me
just standing up and like trying,
like walking around the living room. It's totally normal.
And it's 12:30 a.m
and I'm finally ready to go to sleep.
Good night.
[fading music]