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Photo by Erin Nelson.
Meghan Gutowski, 15, a sophomore at Spain Park High School, runs through a ballet routine at the Alabama Academy of Dance on April 6. Gutowski is attending the Royal Ballet School in London this summer.
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Photo courtesy of Pam Sayle.
Meghan Gutowski performs a variation from “La Esmeralda” during a Universal Ballet competition.
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Photos by Erin Nelson.
Meghan Gutowski runs through a ballet routine at the Alabama Academy of Dance.
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Photos by Erin Nelson.
Meghan Gutowski runs through a ballet routine at the Alabama Academy of Dance.
How hard is it for a 15-year-old from Hoover to make it into the summer intensive training program of the Royal Ballet School in London?
“Impossible,” said Pam Sayle, owner of the Alabama Dance Academy in Hoover. That is — unless you’re Meghan Gutowski.
Gutowski, a 15-year-old freshman at Spain Park High School, will be among the select students headed to the prestigious ballet school in July for the one-month experience. Numbers for this summer were not available, but last year, 2,458 students from all over the world applied, and only 659 were accepted, a school official said.
“It’s an exciting opportunity,” Gutowski said.
Her love of dance began at an early age.
“When I was 3, I would always dance around the house,” Gutowski said.
Her mom had never been into dance, and until that point, their family had mostly been involved with her brother’s sports.
But one day, she told her mother she wanted to dance.
“She found the closest studio and put me in a ballet class,” Gutowski said.
But it wasn’t love at first position or first plié. She didn’t like it — at all.
“After my first class, I told my mom I didn’t want to dance anymore, but she had already paid for the whole year,” Gutowski said.
And as it turns out, her mom’s desire to instill some stick-to-itiveness has reaped some big and unexpected rewards. For one, now Gutowski loves dance.
“It’s an escape from reality,” she said. “You can do so much with it, and I like the way it makes me feel. I just love it so much.”
Not only that — she’s exceptionally good at it, Sayle said.
She said Gutowski is “definitely a talent on the rise.”
“It’s very difficult to get into this program,” Sayle said of the Royal Ballet School. “I’ve had my studio for 27 years and never had a student I thought would even get in to do the audition, but I thought she had a good shot.”
Gutowski joined Sayle’s studio four years ago, and Sayle knew immediately she was different.
“She was blessed with a lot of natural ability as far as flexibility and what in the industry people look for as far as feet turnout and body type,” she said. “But that’s not enough; you have to back it up with your work and your training. She works incredibly hard, and it pays off.”
People who want to dance professionally train six days a week for five hours a day, at least, Sayle said.
“It’s very difficult for them to juggle school with training,” she said. “Meghan is starting virtual school next year so she can train more hours.”
In addition to training, Gutowski spends a lot of time at serious competitions where scouts are looking for the future professionals of the world, Sayle said.
Gutowski recently advanced past the regionals of the American Dance Competition International Ballet Competition and was invited to the finals in Florida. On March 22, Gutowski performed as one of the top 12 at the gala and placed 10th out of 150 girls at the finals.
“It’s a major accomplishment, a huge deal for her,” Sayle said, noting that she’s never had a student invited to perform at the final round of the gala before. “And she’s only 15.”
Sayle said one factor that makes the ADC IBC finals even more intense is that on the first day, competitors are taught a classical solo that they have to perform on stage 24 hours later.
“It shows the judges things like — are they good at picking up choreography? Are they good under pressure?” Sayle said. “They’re able to practice their other dances for months, but they only have a day for this one. All the coaches and students scramble to find studio space so the coaches can work with their students even for an hour to give them last-minute tips.”
But Gutowski “went out and did a beautiful job,” Sayle said.
All that work comes with a payoff, too, she said. Ballet students win scholarships at performances such as these. Gutowski has racked up about 15 so far.
At this competition, she was awarded scholarships to Next Generation Ballet in Florida, the Pittsburgh Ballet, Cary Ballet Conservatory in North Carolina and the Colorado Ballet. Some scholarships are for this summer, some next summer and some can be used as short stays during the academic school year, Sayle said.
Last year at the Universal Ballet Competition, Gutowski won a scholarship for an intensive in Kansas City, which she participated in recently during spring break, and she has another at a ballet academy in Houston soon. This summer, in addition to her month at the Royal Ballet School, she will spend time at the Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle.
Gutowski said she loves the intensives.
“Every place is different, and there’s a lot of different teachers and dancers to learn from,” she said.
That all helps toward her goal of dancing professionally one day.
“I just really want to dance in Europe, any place in Europe,” Gutowski said. “It’s been a dream of mine.”
At the end of April, Gutowski had the lead role as the Queen of Hearts in Alabama Dance Academy’s spring production of “Alice in Wonderland.”
Gutowski’s mother, Rachel, said it’s moving for her to watch her daughter perform and know all the training she’s done to make that happen.
“I was thinking it was going to be a little phase, but it just grabbed her,” she said. “When she was first able to really string sentences together, she would tell me she wanted to dance. By the time she was in the third or fourth grade, I could really tell she had something extra. It’s very emotional for me watching her do something that comes so naturally for her.”
