FW FEATURE
YES! We know she can dance
By Gary S. Hatrick
To use William Shakespeare’s
line of thought: some are born
dancers, some achieve dancing
and some have dancing thrust
upon them. Those of the third category
often do not continue their
lessons, those of the second category work hard in their class-
because it is in their soul.
Victoria Neukom appears to be one of those.
“I have always said from the time I could remember I’m
going to be a dancer,” Victoria said just before leaving for
Los Angeles to pursue her destiny. “I remember in elementary
school saying ‘I’m going to be a professional
dancer,’ I’ve said that my whole life pretty
much. It just got stronger and stronger
as I got older.”
The 19-year-old Zephyrhills
Tampa City Ballet following
You Think You Can Dance”
on the heels of 15 years of
dance lessons.
Victoria started dancing
when she was three
with a once a week ballet
class at Helen’s Dance
and Baton in Zephyrhills.
taking classes at Blackwood
Studios in Dade City where
she remained until she graduated.
“It kind of became the only thing
I cared about,” Victoria explained. “I
Ioved going to class. I loved making sure
I was doing everything right - just correcting
and listening to the corrections. When
Victoria Neukom spreads
her wings in an
Ireland photo shoot.
the teacher would correct me, which meant
a lot to me because it would help me get
better and that’s all I wanted to do. It was
very, like, motivating for me to get better
and watch myself get better. It was something I really love to
do. As I started to get more opportunities, and started getting
better and better, I realized that this was the life I was meant
to live and it was more of my purpose than just a hobby.”
(Photo Credit Collette Mruk)
Many of her dances would be saturated with aerials and
other dance moves and accuracy of movement requiring
strength and well-developed muscles. Victoria admits to al-
in a performance that the average audience would never notice.
“I was very hard on myself, yes,” she said. “You have to
be to get to a level that is professional, you have to nitpick and
sculpt yourself to be at a professional level. There are just too
many professional people that are going to be better and are
going to get your job if you’re not tough on yourself and train
harder and harder and harder. Every day I would be taking
as many classes as I can and lately I’ve been dancing about
eight hours a day.”
Victoria said she enjoys all sorts of dance “I love them
all,” she said. “I love training in ballet for my fundamentals
and my strength and my posture and everything - ballet is the
fundamental of dance for me. I love the freedom of contemporary
and telling stories and making art with contemporary,
but I’m open to all the dance styles including hip-hop and
ballroom and all these new styles that are being invented at
this point in time. There are a lot of new styles emerging - fusions
of different styles. I just like movement in general.”
Before she left for California, Victoria has
just completed a set of performances with
the Tampa City Ballet called “If I Cry.” It
was a new experience. “We put together
the show in about three weeks with
eight hours of rehearsal a day,” She
said. “We had about an hour of
choreography that we had to put
together. It was very much a collaborative
effort. We all kind of
had the material and the ideas
in our heads and we would just
kind of move and create and
the artistic director would give
us ideas and movement.”
Performing professionally
was very different from dance
classes and recitals, Victoria
said. “You are moving for an hour
straight. Normally, maybe you’ll
dance on stage for maybe two minutes
at a time - we were dancing for an hour
straight. That’s the transition that I needed
to go through from being a student to being
-
ence to happen. I was able to learn what it was
like to really work in a professional company
before I head out to Los Angeles.”
In July, Victoria competed in “So You
Think You Can Dance.” Friends and family watched excitedly
as she achieved a spot in the top 30 out of about 3,000 who
started in the competition nationally.
“That was very eye opening and it motivated me that I
was capable of going on and doing big things. I really loved
that you are independent and you basically control how far
you can go. It was a very Hollywood experience, I also need
that experience to happen because there are two different
worlds of dance - commercial and concert and I got to do
20 • JAN/FEB 2019 813.682.9364 FLORIDA WOMEN MAGAZINE