Ballerinas: Classy, poised, and graceful. Kaya Chun: not exactly that. This is not a bad thing in the slightest though. In fact, Kaya Chun is actually an extremely skilled dancer with an amazing talent: balancing the life of a ballerina and the life of a regular teenager.
Chun, a freshman at George Mason, has been dancing ballet for more than ten years. She practices 20 hours a week, every day after school and practically all day on Saturday. In addition to ballet, Chun practices several other types of dance.
“I do modern, contemporary, hip-hop, jazz, lyrical, sometimes African dancing, rarely tap, and flamenco sometimes,” she said.
Yet ballet is her forte. Kaya has excelled in it since an early age, and in many ways, her life has been shaped around her dance career.
“We moved to Virginia mostly for dance but also for education,” Kaya said.
This move, from Bethesda, ended up paying off. Today, Kaya is in C3, or Conservatory Three, which is the highest level at her studio, BalletNova. Almost all of the girls are years older than her; Kaya is the second-youngest of the class. Thus the pressure for Kaya, at her age, is especially high.
Kaya has been on pointe (pictured below) from the early age of eight, which for a ballerina, is a big step in their career
“It’s kind of a marking in your training where you start to become stronger and you learn to control your muscles and your technique becomes cleaner,” Kaya explained.
She has also been a pre-professional since she was about ten, and for those non-ballet experts, pre-professional is, as defined by Kaya, practicing the sport five to six days a week, two and a half hours a day, and being on pointe for at least an hour every day. Basically, it means an insane amount of commitment.
“It’s a lot of pressure and competition in dance,” Kaya stated. “There’s always going to be someone younger than you and better than you and it’s just really hard.”
In addition to her practice of ballet, Kaya does a varied number of other hobbies, including learning Chinese and Robotics. In sharp contrast to all of those activities, she was once involved in glee club and choir in the past.
“So you can sing?”
She chuckles before responding. “Uh, not well.”
Even if Chun has lost her singing touch, she still is very committed to her other activities, like her practice of Chinese. As of her freshman year, Kaya is in Chinese Four, and has been enrolled in a high-school level since 6th grade. So, I asked her to say something in Chinese.
“Ni-hao,” of course, she simply says “hello”.
“Something else.”
“Wǒ xǐhuān chī dōngxī.”
“And what does that mean?”
“I like to eat food.”
That sounds like something just about every teenager would say, but would every teenager be able to balance dance, school, hobbies, and a social life? I asked how she does this and her answer was simple.
“Hanging out is quite non-existent.”
Yet despite her saying this, despite her intense dance schedule, despite school work and other things, I find this hard to believe. In the 45-minute span of our interview, Kaya had conversations with, greeted, or yelled across the hallway at about 20 people. For someone who says they don’t hang out outside of school, she seem to have quite a few friends.
It is obvious that despite her commitment to dance, Kaya has found a way to make plenty of connections here at Mason and here in Falls Church. And that’s just how Kaya is – a social butterfly, able to be friends with anyone.
To conclude our interview, I asked Kaya to describe herself in three words.
“Outgoing, talkative, and I would like to say friendly.”
If it were up to me, in addition to her own self-descriptors, I would say passionate, hardworking, and yes, 100 percent, friendly.
