Breaking Into Ballet as an Adult

This 27-year-old ballet dancer is proving it’s never too late to go after what you want.

When Veronica Viccora was about to enter her first adult ballet class at age 27, she felt a medley of nerves, imposter syndrome, and uncertainty. Armed with a background in musical theater, Viccora had tried to pursue ballet on other occasions but was met with resistance. One dance teacher told her she should save herself the effort and that her body had developed in ways that would never fit what a ballerina’s should be, she recalls.

But this time around, the vibe at the dance studio, Broadway Dance Center, put Viccora at ease. “It just completely opened up my eyes and the whole world of dance, because all of a sudden, I'm seeing that there's people of all body shapes and all age ranges and all talent levels coming together to dance,” she says. “And it just kind of signaled to me that everything I thought I knew was wrong.”

Now, she ignores the belief that there’s an age limit on taking up ballet. Viccora averages five classes per week in New York, focusing mainly on ballet but also incorporating jazz and burlesque classes. She juggles her dance schedule with a handful of jobs — including freelance writing and owning a pet-care business. She hasn’t set a goal to make ballet her source of income just yet. But she does know she wants to continue progressing. 

“I definitely have goals relating to my technical abilities,” says Viccora. “I want to be able to do pirouettes and fouettés and all the things that I dreamt of when I was a kid, but I'm really trying not to put too much pressure on any professional goals or anything like that. I do also want to be on stage, whether I can be paid or that's just something that I'll do for fun, that is a big dream of mine that I am pushing towards.”

If all goes as planned, it won’t be long before that happens. Viccora is rehearsing to appear in a production of The Nutcracker with a theater on Long Island. She’s landed what she describes as “a very small part in the party scene,” with a palpable excitement in her voice.

Throughout her venture into ballet as an adult, Viccora has discussed her perspective in videos posted on social media. She even coordinated a recent adult ballet workshop in New York, with a second class in the works.

While she’s encountered some naysayers — people questioning whether she’s sharing her full story or suggesting she must’ve “married rich” and doesn’t work to afford her classes — she’s had an overwhelmingly positive response. She receives stories that bring her to tears “on a daily basis,” she says — and not just from other adult dancers.

“I think some of the most notable are actually the 12- and 13-year-old girls that reach out to me and say, ‘I already thought that I was too late — I'm already being told that I'm too late,’” she says. “When you hear that, you understand why into our 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, we start to think, ‘I'm just here to get up, go to work, and do the same thing every day,’ because we're already receiving messaging by 12 or 13 that we're just washed up and no good anymore.”

In sharing her approach to ballet as an adult, Viccora hopes to drive home a particular message: "I’m trying to share with others that it's never too late to just do something because you're passionate about it,” she says. “It doesn't have to always be about an end goal. "It can just be, ‘This is what makes me feel alive, and that is what life is about.’"

Photo: Sydney K. Bradley / Photo: Keith Cornelius