A ballerina in her own right
Quaker started the dance lessons at Feed My Lambs with The Dance Development Academy under Angela Thomas in Eldorado Park.
Micaela Quaker (22) started with ballet at the age of three years old, she shares with us what the journey has been like thus far. Quaker started the dance lessons at Feed My Lambs with The Dance Development Academy under Angela Thomas in Eldorado Park.
“I think that my parents needed me to do something so they just put me into these ballet classes. At the age of five, I was thinking that this is it. There was never a question to when I’d ever leave dance because I always knew that I was going to keep dancing,” said Quaker.
There was a year however when the ballerina stopped dancing at the academy explained that she needed to fill that gap, and that is when she started dancing in ministry, which was in her first year of High School.
[also read] – Soweto beauty pageants postponed due to Covid-19
Quaker added: “When I started at university, completing a bachelor’s degree in accounting, I only danced my first year because I was the principal dancer at the academy and this was always a dream of mine. We’d always hear our teacher saying that ‘you going to be a principal dancer’ and I just believed it for all these years, so that was something I had to work towards, so when I became principal dancer, it was like this is the highest point that you can get at a dance school and then I was thinking what’s next? So after I got my degree which was last year, I decided that I would like to teach, so this year was the year where I would have been teaching the littles one at the dance academy but due to the pandemic, that could not be possible.”
When asked what dance means to her, it was difficult to explain because she said that it has taught her so many good life lessons over the years.
“Dance is how I express myself, as outspoken as I am, dance is still a way that I express myself. Ministry plays a big part in it too, because when you grow up as a dancer, you think of yourself as a performer and everything is about you, but in a ministry, you realise that it isn’t about you but about God.”
“Dance taught me a lot of discipline, there’s a lot of things that young girls can do, if they took the time to not be consumed by the wrong influences in our communities, I think that dance can pull young girls out of these bad situations. I think that there’s a lot of class that comes from ballet and people look at you and show some manner of respect for your craft,” she explained.
Quaker admires a dancer by the name: Misty Capeland. “She use to be a principal dancer for an American ballet company and I’ve never seen coloured ballerina’s, it’s always been white ballerinas that you see on the TV so she was the first non-white principal dancer that I saw, so ever since then I’ve been following her career so I could see that it is possible.”
“I wouldn’t say that South Africa highlights our craft but I think that we should know that where the line is, is not your limit, you can go much further and that is a life lesson as a whole too, so I apply this to my daily life. Dance teaches you to push yourself in life, it allows you to know that there is so much greatness inside of you and that there’s so much you as an individual can do.”
“During these stressful times, dance allows you to forget about all the problems, dance becomes my safe space. During this lockdown, I’ve tried making time for dance here in the house, but it’s also in every, just walking in the passage and doing a turn, trying to reach for the shelf, do a quick leg lift, it’s just in everything that I do.”
We’ve heard about ballerinas and their bloody toes, so we ask Quaker about it, she said: “I really did bleed, it was after a year break and everyone was on point, so when I got back I had to be on point too so I pushed myself and when I got home, I took off my shoes and my toes were bleeding, my skin was coming off my toes. I’m a contemporary dancer too so I’m not always on point so I’ve only experienced the bleeding toes once.”
The Dance Development Academy celebrated their twentieth-anniversary last year and Quaker was voted ‘Best principal dancer’ and this title was the best principal dancer in the history of the school.
Quaker concluded the interview with sharing how she felt about the award: “that award meant so much to me because the kids voted for me and I never thought that I made such a huge impact on their lives, they look at me as their role model so that is a big deal for me.”
Quaker is currently completing her Honours in Accounting and hopes that she can be teaching ballet lessons next year at the academy.
Follow Us Here:
Catch the latest news by visiting our other platforms:
