Ballet dancer Tess Duval, a 13-year-old Laguna Beach resident, was recently selected by audition to join the five-week summer intensive program with the School of American Ballet at New York’s Lincoln Center.
At age 9, after being told she was unprepared to join a local ballet program, Tess dabbled in sports until breaking a finger playing basketball sent her back to the studio. “I always knew she would end up dancing,” said her mother, Michalina Miller. “She just had it in her.”
Tess enrolled in a Laguna Hills studio, where she thrived and has moved on to a pre-professional program at Dmitri Kulev Classical Ballet Academy, also in Laguna Hills, where she spends over 20 hours a week dancing.
Tess spent last summer dancing with the Bolshoi Ballet’s summer program in Connecticut.
