Twenty-year-old Tabitha Dombroski is a professional ballet dancer who moved to Europe from New Zealand in 2017. She is now a member of the Swiss Offspring Ballet company, and in Germany completed two years at the world-renowned John Cranko Schule in Stuttgart that trains state-approved classical dancers.  

Having performed at various academies before landing at the John Cranko Schule, where three of her pieces were performed at the school's annual dance matinee in 2019, the performer is realizing a dream that began at three years of age.

In an interview with DW, the dancer and choreographer discusses the grueling training program she undertook in Germany, the limits of one's own resilience, the importance of mental fortitude, and changes that would be desirable in dance education.

Read more: From the Bolshoi to the attic: Russian ballet in lockdown

Her insights come in the wake of criticism of the Berlin State Ballet School, with public broadcaster RBB and the newspaper Die Zeit reporting­ in February a "culture of fear" due to the pressure to train long days and perform, even when injured, and to diet to control weight. A former teacher said the long days caused an excessive number of injuries. Similar allegations were levelled at the Vienna State Ballet, with a 2019 investigation stating that students were encouraged to smoke to suppress hunger — the academy has since promised to address the physical and mental health of the students.

DW: What has inspired you to become a ballet professional?

Tabitha Dombroski:  It's so beautiful. But it's so hard. It's so physical and it requires so much discipline and determination. It's got all the physicality of a sport, yet you have to be beautiful and artistic to make it look easy. And it's a way of expression.

DW: Why did you want to train at the John Cranko Schule?

It's just one of the best ballet schools in the world, and it's one of the last kinds of schools based on the Russian method. They're very deeply rooted in that. And they have produced some of the most versatile dances. I really love contemporary dance as well as ballet.

DW: What is a typical day of training at the school like?

We started classes around 9:00 and we'd have a two-hour ballet class. Then we'd go straight into one hour of solos or variations, and then we'd have lunch. And then after lunch, you'd either go into rehearsals for any pieces you were in — for performances coming up, or we'd have learned Spanish dance and we played castagnettes. We had pas de deux, contemporary. I also choreographed quite late at night for the younger students because they would attend regular school in the morning and would come in the evenings and dance, and I would teach them. In my own training program in our first year, we had academics kind of scattered throughout the week, which were things like music, anatomy, dance history, dance theory. And we had German classes as well.

DW: On Facebook you wrote that you "survived" your time there. Could you elaborate?

I grew up being a very versatile dancer mainly doing ballet, but also did a lot of contemporary and jazz. And I was always more artistic with my dancing. And it was more expression and the use of your face and your upper body. And with Russian training it is all about technique first, clean technique and training. And so it was really good. It was what I needed. But it was very hard because it has just simple movements that have to be perfect every single time you do them. And the teachers are very tough on you. They don't let anything go. They do it because they really care about their dancers. They really push you to your limit. And you walk out of school every day feeling absolutely dead and tired and — yeah — it's very hard on your body. Ballet is a physical art form and you have to look the part. And so the training is very hard to make sure that you're very fit and you look like a ballerina.

DW: Is such a rigid training regime still contemporary?

That is very interesting. It's a very old-fashioned way of training, and the school did very classic ballet training. Nowadays, mental and physical health are a very big thing and that's not quite integrated into the school. They don't have any of those kind of health professionals to oversee everything. It's very different in New Zealand's schools; they're very health-conscious in that way. Whereas over there (Editor's note: in Germany, since she was in New Zealand at the time of the interview), they kind of expect you to know what's good for yourself and to know when it's too much for you. And when you should take a break. You kind of assist your own body and your own physical and mental needs, which works for some people.

DW:  Have you heard the allegations against the Berlin State Ballet company that training hours, for example, were excessively long, or that pupils were forcibly pushed into excessive stretching exercises. 

I have actually heard about some of those accusations against the Berlin state school and it's very interesting. I think the hours that we worked at John Cranko were not that long. I definitely had worked some longer hours here in New Zealand. It was a bit more condensed so they made sure we had time to regenerate. And if people had a lot of rehearsals, they were very aware of that.

DW: Is there a secret to successfully pursuing a career as a professional ballet dancer?

Ballet is so hard and fast and you need to fall in love with it early and keep pushing as hard as you can, as early as you can. The most important thing for your career is just to make sure that you're in it for the right reasons, and that you truly love it and you are happy and you're not sacrificing your health and your well-being. Ballet and dance can be very rewarding, but it's very hard work to get to those rewards. So if you're not willing to kind of make the sacrifices and put in the hard work for those rewards, then it can be a bit of a long road leading to not too much.