By Emily Williams
Everything was beautiful at the ballet, in the words of lyricist Edward Kleban, and those words are still true in Birmingham as the Alabama Ballet looks forward to its 2015-2016 season.
After all, the demands of ballet are rigorous and constant, and that doesn’t change during the summer performance break, which sisters Alana and Ariana Czernobil know all too well. Neither of the sisters, who are in the unusual position of dancing in the same company and will appear together in a performance this fall, slowed down one bit over the summer.
Alana is a faculty member of both the Encore Performance Company and NS Dance Studio and spent her vacation teaching. Ariana spent the summer traveling and studying full-time at UAB, where she is working toward a degree in kinesiology.
The Czernobil sisters grew up in Chicago, honed their skills at a conservatory in North Carolina and each found their way to the state of Alabama to perform with the Alabama Ballet as company dancers.
The duo have shared many things in their dancing careers, including graduating from the North Carolina School of the Arts, a boarding school that combines academics and intensive arts training and where a student’s day begins at 8 a.m. and ends at 9 p.m.
“Most people would probably say it’s similar to (the high school in) ‘Fame,’” Alana said. “It was a conservatory for the arts.”
Alana spent all four of her high school years at the conservatory while Ariana spent three.
The love of ballet came to Ariana a bit later than it did to Alana. “I started when I was three and I hated it,” Ariana said. “I hated it, but it kind of grew on me. I didn’t know I really wanted to dance until I was a freshman in high school.”
Even though she did not have a true love of dance, she, like Alana, began the intensive training necessary for success in the field when she was between her sixth- and seventh-grade school years.
“I would go to ballet class from 4:30 to 9 p.m. every night and then travel back home and have to do homework after that,” she said.
Alana’s love for the art of ballet began when she turned three years old and received her first pair of slippers, but her true passion came a bit later.
“When I was nine, the Joffrey Ballet moved to Chicago and I was (in) their first children’s cast of ‘The Nutcracker,’” Alana said, and that is when she fully committed to the idea of becoming a ballerina.
Though they found their passion for dance at different times, their current love for the job is ever increasing.
Beyond the physical demands, Ariana said that being part of a company and playing roles allows a dancer to challenge themselves mentally as they develop their characters.
“It’s something that, even at 28, you find things you can improve upon,” Alana said. “You never feel like you’re stagnant in any way, you’re just always developing.”
Though Alana and Ariana have a built-in support system as sisters, they said the entire company feels like a family of like-minded individuals.
“With ballet and the arts in general, you benefit from a sense of community,” Alana said. “So, right away, if you’re a new member in the company, people are very accepting and they understand.”
Understanding is a key factor for the ballet community, considering the physical demands that a ballet dancer faces – or what Ariana describes as the “perfection aspect” that many dancers are always trying to achieve.
“You strive for it, but you’re never going to get it,” she said. “Nobody is perfect. You’re never going to have that one perfect performance.”
The sisters’ perfect roles would be ones they could perform together – as the first and second violins in Balanchine’s “Concerto Barocco.”
For now, that goal will have to wait. But as the Alabama Ballet company kicks off its new 2015-16 season, the sisters are looking forward to a performance at the end of October in which they have been cast in two of the leading roles of Frank Staff’s “Transfigured Night.” The one-act ballet will debut as a part of the American Horror Stories performance on Oct. 29, Oct. 31 and Nov. 1.
“Doing the ‘Transfigured Night’ is something that will be a nice accomplishment together,” Alana said. “It’s about sisters and it’s very rare that two sisters are in the same company together.”
This won’t be the first time the duo has performed alongside each other. In the ballet’s annual performance of “The Nutcracker,” Alana and Ariana have shared roles opposite each other as demi-soloists in the “Waltz of the Flowers.”
As for the upcoming season, the sisters are looking forward to performances that they hope will excite audiences and also looking forward to days filled with rehearsals.
