Advertisement

‘I love it so much, it’s almost automatic’

Share

The teacher has watched the pupil grow under a decade of tutelage.

Tyler Donatelli entered Salwa Rizkalla’s Southland Ballet Academy in Fountain Valley when the aspiring classical dancer from Huntington Beach was 4 years old.

“She has extreme talent,” said Rizkalla, who founded the academy at 9527 Garfield Ave. more than 30 years ago.

“You cannot tell early enough how the person will turn out, but Tyler possesses the qualities of a unique protégé ...,” she added. “You can tell that she will be a professional — and a successful one.”

Advertisement

Now 15, Tyler just clinched a pair of back-to-back honors at the regional and national levels that can only put her an en pointe flutter of toe tips closer to her dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer.

On April 28 in Los Angeles, she won the first-place award in the ballet category at the 24th annual Music Center Spotlight Awards at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

According to a news release, more than 2,300 high school students took part in the year-long program that disburses $5,000 and $4,000 in respective scholarship prizes to first-place winners and runners-up who compete in a slew of performing and visual arts categories.

Tyler was one of two girls from Surf City who took home top honors; 17-year-old Elizabeth Romero, a senior enrolled in Huntington Beach High School’s Academy for the Performing Arts, was the first-place winner in the nonclassical voice category.

And, only a week before dancing in the semifinal and final rounds of the Spotlight Awards, Tyler competed at New York’s Lincoln Center as part of the Youth America Grand Prix, the world’s largest international scholarship-based contest.

Tyler was the silver medalist among girls and women competing in the Senior Age Division, which is open to and female dancers ages 15 to 19. Although she didn’t win the gold, Tyler outperformed a 19-year-old dancer from South Korea, bronze medalist Gayeon Jung.

Tyler’s silver medal added to a bronze that she won at the 2011 grand prix in New York, while competing in the Junior Age Division.

“I’m so honored,” Tyler said. “I was younger and just thought it would be impossible.”

The roster of Spotlight Award winners listed the teen as a freshman enrolled at Huntington Beach High, which is where she was studying at the start of the 2011-12 school year.

However, about a month ago, her mother, Chrissy Donatelli, enrolled her at Pacific Coast High School, an independent study program run by the Orange County Department of Education.

Tyler’s rigorous ballet training regimen and schedule of competitions — many of them out of state — would cut into her instruction time at H.B. High. According to her mom, Tyler is a straight-A student, but the school had warned her that her daughter was missing too many classes to accommodate ballet.

Chrissy Donatelli is a single mother of two and a part-time photographer, who said she often has had to scrape money together to accompany Tyler on her trips to ballet competitions.

If they have to travel in the middle of a school year, Donatelli’s parents, who live in Huntington Beach, take care of Donatelli’s 12-year-old son, Shane, who attends Dwyer Middle School. Otherwise, he’ll tag along during summertime trips.

Tyler’s mom supports her daughter’s dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer but, at the same time, she wants her to go to college.

“She’s one injury away from never dancing again,” Chrissy Donatelli said, adding that Tyler has never been injured on the dance floor. “I want her to have an education because that is something that can never be taken away.”

Tyler has been awarded summer of 2012 scholarships to attend the Houston Ballet, Boston Ballet, the Princess Grace Ballet Academy in Monaco, and the José Manuel Carreño Dance Festival in Sarasota, Fla., but she has her mind set on to the prestigious San Francisco Ballet.

On average, Tyler trains 3½ hours day. She will take a morning class at the academy, go home for lunch, take care of her homework, and often return to the academy for another class in the afternoon. Twice weekly, in addition to her ballet classes, she receives private lessons from Rizkalla.

The teenager acknowledged that the routine can tire her out, but she is mindful too that she can only realize her dream through hard work and discipline.

“I love it so much, it’s almost automatic,” Tyler said. “I feel like I have to do it.”

imran.vittachi@latimes.com

Twitter: @ImranVittachi

Advertisement