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First Posted: 4/27/2015

DALLAS — She wanted to dance.

Anna Giacometti got to dance the role of her young life April 25 and 26 as she danced the double role of Odile/Odette in the classic ballet, “Swan Lake.”

As graceful as any swan, she flew, she pirouetted, she leaped and spun. She enchanted the audience as well as the prince.

None of it, though, came without intense training, lots of time and overcoming difficulties.

But she wanted to dance.

The now-17-year-old from Dallas started dancing almost 15 years ago. It was a combination of her fascination with ballerinas and her mother’s efforts to get the little girl to overcome shyness. She practiced moves in her room. But she needed to do more.

“I was one of those little girls who wouldn’t talk to people, even look at them. I would hide behind my mom,” she said. “It wasn’t easy, either. The first time I was on stage, I just stood there and cried.”

That might be a normal reaction for most 2-year-olds, but a teacher at Misericordia University with whom she was working saw something special in her student and encouraged her to go further. In fact, that teacher broke a few rules and took the little girl to the Joan Harris conservatory in Luzerne to continue training.

“I actually got here a tiny bit earlier than the rules allow,” Anna said. “I shouldn’t have been able to come here until I was 3.”

Dawn Giacometti drove her daughter to weekly classes at the studio where students refer to their teachers as “Miss Eleanor, “Miss Sarah” or “Mr. Edward.” She joined the dozens of young dancers in a place where discipline is combined with positive encouragement to build skills.

Because she wanted to dance.

Those weekly lessons became the center of Anna’s life outside of family and school. And they became much greater as the years passed.

Dance helped her to move on after the sudden death of her father, Charles, in 2009.

“I was in fifth grade. He took me to school in the morning and everything was like it always was. And then he had a heart attack while I was in school. And everything changed,” she said. “It was pretty rough for my brother and me. We were just young kids.”

Anna stayed home for several weeks, not wanting to leave her mother alone. But three weeks passed and she got back to the dance studio.

“I actually came back here before I went back to school,” she said. “I knew my dad would have wanted me to keep dancing.”

That was when she upped her weekly sessions to several days, gradually working herself into four nights a week in dance class. She works on “everything” – jazz, tap and modern dance as well as ballet.

And, then, there was the pain. She points out her inward-facing knees as she stands.

“I always had pain in my knees,” she said. “The doctors here said it was just because I was growing and I’d grow out of it. But I still had pain, long into my teens when I really wasn’t growing any more.”

Dawn Giacometti took the 16-year-old to a Philadelphia specialist who actually took photos of her knees because he “had never seen knees like this.” Anna describes it as “a muscle that’s supposed to wrap around the knee to stabilize it, but my knee muscles don’t do that.”

The ultimate solution to the problem is an intense surgery in which doctors would re-construct her legs, resulting in months of rehabilitation. Instead, Anna opted for physical therapy. She would rather deal with the pain.

“Dance is what I want to do. I’m not going to let my knees get in the way of that,” she said. “All this time, I didn’t tell my dance teachers about my knees because I didn’t want anyone to treat me differently or not push me to be my best.”

It is really Anna herself who does the pushing.

When she learned just before Christmas last year that she had the dream role of Odile/Odette, she gave herself a few minutes to celebrate, then spent all of Christmas break preparing. It was something she’d dreamed of since she first saw “Swan Lake” in 2003.

“It’s a monster ballet,” she said. “I thought I might some day have a lead in the corps. I was hoping for it, but I didn’t really think it was achievable. And when I got that role, I didn’t want to miss my opportunity.”

She reviewed the choreography at home while working on an elliptical machine. She practiced turns in the basement. Ballerinas sew their own toe shoes, adding elastic straps and ribbons, and Anna went through eight pairs between January and the “Swan Lake” performance. Her time at the studio grew to six days a week and turned into what was really a 30-hour-per-week part-time job.

“I can’t see myself coming home and not doing anything. I like to keep busy,” she said. “Nothing irks me more than people who say they’re bored. There is so much that can be done.”

A junior at Dallas Area High School, Anna gets home after four hours of dance classes every night, has dinner and then works on homework, sometimes until 3 a.m. She is the junior editor of the school newspaper, Student Council secretary, Diversity Club treasurer, a member of the National Honor Society, the Radio Readers Club where she reads newspapers to the blind, the Friends of Rachel Club which focuses on acceptance and anti-bullying and Junior Leadership Wilkes-Barre.

She also is an assistant dance teacher and assistant theater director at the Harris studio.

Looking forward, Anna refuses to “coast” through senior year, but wants to “kick everything up,” including taking some college courses and AP classes. She will take pre-college classes at New York University this summer, as well as at the Broadway Dance Center.

Her ultimate goal is to get a college degree, majoring in communications and broadcasting. Her “side” goal is to perform on Broadway in musical theater.

Because she loves to dance.