Like most 13 year-old girls, Miranda Wienecke likes to dance. However, her opportunity to dance in Russia on full scholarship and study with the famous Bolshoi ballet group clearly separates her from the life of an average teen.
Wienecke started dancing when she was just two years old. Her favorite type of dance is ballet and tap, but her dancing experience doesn’t stop there. She also takes jazz, modern, ballroom, and even studied hip-hop. Wienecke said, “Ballroom is the hardest because I’ve never really done it before.”
“I want to be a dancer for as long as I can, or teach dance,”said Wienecke. However, if she was not dancing, Wienecke would like to be an environmentalist. “We’re trying to get the studio to go green.”
Her mom, Donna Wienecke, and her mom’s long-time friend, Kristin Hernandez, have owned dance studios together since she can remember. Sometimes the locations and the names change, but it is always the same atmosphere. The studio, called The Mid-Atlantic Center for Performing Artsis the fifth highest- rated dance studio in North America. Hernandez said, “Personally, Randi is very special to me. She is my god daughter, but might as well be my own. She has a passion for dance and a respect for her art that shines through in everything she does.”
When asked about her practices, Wienecke nonchalantly mentioned that she has practices every day, lasting between and four and a half hours. She said, “On Saturdays, if there’s a show coming up, I might be there from 9 – 8:30.” When asked if it was incredibly difficult to balance school and academics she replied, “It can be challenging, but I always find a way to handle it.” She takes Chinese in school because she was originally born in China, but was adopted at the age of one in the United States. ‘
Every year, Wienecke’s dance studio puts on a production of The Nutcracker, but to shake things up they did the Wizard of Oz. “I like to perform. I like the costumes, but some of them are uncomfortable,” said Wienecke. She explained that when she was younger, she mostly did group dances, but now that she is older, she does solos as well.
Wienecke performed two solos and three group dances at the Grand Prix dance competition. First, she went to regionals, where there were dancers from all over the country, and then moved onto nationals, where dancers from all over the world competed. But although she loved being surrounded by people of all different languages and cultures, Wienecke admitted that she was a bit nervous when she first stepped onto the stage in front of a table of judges, as well as a large crowd of observers. In the end, however, Wienecke made a stellar and lasting impression on the judges.
“They offered me a spot in their ballet school, and I go there for a year and live there” said Wienecke. Because she previously attended one of the Bolshoi’s camps, and was required to take an intensive Russian class, Wienecke already knows a little about the Bolshoi ballet group. She considers her offer to go to Russia one of her biggest accomplishments, and plans to follow through with the offer when she is about sixteen or seventeen.
Haley Lynch can be reached for comment at [email protected].