Dance Spotlight: Arianna Vargas

My name is Arianna Vargas, from Ecuador but now I’m a Trainee with United Ballet Theatre, a company in Orlando, FL.

You can follow Arianna at @arianna.vm.

Can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.

I started dancing when I was 7 years old at a local dance studio, at age 10 I knew this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life: a professional ballerina. I started auditioning for competitions and summer intensives and fell in love even more with ballet. At age 16, a renowned ballet teacher, former dancer with Stuttgart ballet: Elisabetta Hertel, came to Ecuador and did open auditions for her Pre-Professional Program in Florence, Italy and invited me to join, only less than 20 dancers were selected from all over the world. Without any doubt I moved across the world and left everything behind, I studied there and graduated after 4 years. After many auditions, I was given a position as a Trainee with United Ballet Theatre, an amazing company directed by Joseph Gatti, and I hope to continue to dance there next season!

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?

Things were definitely not easy for me!! Dance and arts in my country are not as important as they should be! To receive great ballet training and pursue it professionally, it was necessary to leave the country. As soon as I started competing internationally I realized the high level of the dance in other countries and knew I needed to do something about it. I was so lucky my parents supported me in my journey!

What personal limitations if any did you go through in your young career?

I would say my biggest limitation has been myself! My own mind often was filled with negative thoughts, pessimistic and was always telling me I wasn’t good enough. I was always scared to make mistakes and that’s what didn’t let me move forward for so long! Luckily I had a great teacher that made me realize that my only limitation was my own mind and helped me overcome that! That’s what brought me to where I am today.

Has anybody ever tried to limit you on what you could do? If so how did you fight it?

I’m so lucky I have received so much support from my family and friends! I believe only once I got carried away from some people at my school and wanted to do everything they were doing instead of focusing on my dancing. But I realized it soon enough before it got out of hand.

How do you conquer negative talk?

I always say that the best thing to do is to only listen to the good things people have to say and use them wisely as a way to grow and simply put aside the negative things that are very unnecessary and they’ll probably be a disadvantage for you, it’s NOT worth it to give negative talk so much importance.

What is your favorite quote?

My absolute favorite quote is “Everything you want is on the other side of fear”

So, what’s next? Any big plans?

The pandemic is slowing everything down, but I hope to get all my paperwork done in order to go to the United States again and continue to be at United Ballet Theatre as a Trainee, it’s really wonderful and the months I spent there were the best. It’s a place that’s really close to my heart.