Emma Ballance’s talent yields the reward of a prestigious ballet school

By Connie Leinbach

Well on her way to becoming a professional ballet dancer, 12-year-old Ocracoke native Emma Reese Ballance of Winston-Salem has been a ballet dancer since she was three.

She began pre-professional training earlier this month with the American Ballet Theatre Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School in New York City where she will spend her weekday evenings and Saturdays further perfecting her already admired ballet technique.

This is a return trip to New York City, having just completed the summer intensive program at the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) there.

ABT was her choice after she was accepted into several other summer intensive programs.

“At 12, Emma Reese was eligible for a summer intensive at big city ballets around the country,” said her dad, Alton Ballance.

She auditioned for them this winter while a student at the University of North Carolina School for the Arts in Winston-Salem where she most recently lived with her mom, Trisha Caviness. While attending the JKO School, she lives in Brooklyn.

Although she left Ocracoke several years ago, when she visits, she keeps in touch with some of her island classmates.

With an interviewer, the seventh grader talks easily about her life so far and her future plans.

A dance natural with long legs and a slender body, Emma Reese, as she is called, already looks professional and had professional photos taken.

“I just loved going to class,” she said about her passion in a recent interview on Ocracoke at her dad’s house. “I would go to tap and then I would go to ballet.”

Various parts in “Nutcracker” productions locally and at the Greensboro Tanger Center cemented her performing passion.

She entered the competitive dance world at age 9 as a member of a dance studio in Southern Pines where she took classes in hip hop, jazz and ballet. She joined their competition team and even captured some national honors.

More than the national honors, she liked receiving the judges’ choice and awards for her emotional expression.

After that, she decided to focus on ballet and began intensive ballet training at age 10.

“So, I’ve been doing that for about two years,” she said. “Everyone thinks it’s crazy.”

In New York, Emma will go to school virtually via the Scholars Academy, which is North Carolina-based but is for pre-professional dancers who can’t attend school full time.

“She was able to maintain an A-plus average these years of doing dance, which meant getting up at 5 a.m. to do homework,” Alton said.

Just like her summer intensive, she attends four hours of ballet practice five days a week and five hours on Saturdays at JKO.

Having spent the summer at ABT, returning to its school will be an easy transition.

“I just feel like ABT is such a big family and everyone knows each other,” she said. “I feel like everyone is just supportive.”

Emma expects to go pro in three to four years.

The school’s artistic director, Stella Abrera, praised Emma’s emotive dancing.

“She said when I dance I just project into the audience,” she said. “Even when she taught my class, she said that her eye just goes to me because of the way I carry myself.”

But there’s more to it.

“When you watch a dancer on stage, you can have the perfect technique,” she said, “but if you don’t have the artistry, it’s just not the whole package.”

Emma recently joined the ranks of Instagram influencers for Nikolay, a brand that sells pointe shoes and dance apparel.

For her content, she gets three boxes during the year full of pointe shoes and other new things which she shares on her social media.

“I’m so grateful I get to be a part of the Nikolay brand because it’s one of the big brands in the dancewear industry,” she said.

Her Instagram account is @emma_ballance.