Alita Pirozzi has been dancing almost her entire life: 12 years, to be exact. With this year being Alita’s senior year at JC, she has begun to create her Senior Project. Alita plans to present her project this April.

For her Senior Project, Alita is “making an informational and educational type video on the physics of ballet.”
At JC, Alita is in the STEAM program and the dance program. These two passions of hers led her to the decision to select this as her project option.
Alita said, “I wanted to combine my academic interests with my hobbies that I’ve been doing since I was a kid so that it reflects me.”
Alita has begun her project and still is in the research phase of it.
She said, “My dance teacher gave me two books that I’ve been using; one is about the science of ballet, and the other is about the physics of ballet.”
She also said that she is using “a bunch of websites just to collect all the facts and visuals I need, and then next month I’ll start the actual video.”
Her favorite part of making her Senior Project is the freedom of it.
“I like the creativity aspect of it. I get to pick what I’m doing and how I’m doing it.”
She has enjoyed learning about the complex details that go into what seem like simple moves.
She cited an example. “When a dancer begins their leap, they need friction in order to push against the ground because this friction allows them to accelerate forward and upward due to Newton’s Third Law.”
However, Alita has run into some challenges through the process of researching and coming up with the idea of her project. Alita said that she has found it difficult to understand the physics aspect of her project.
She said, “I don’t really know too much about physics…I’ve kind of been having to teach myself a lot about physics.”
By choosing to combine physics and ballet for her Senior Project, Alita hopes to teach other dancers about the ways in which their movements work so they can have a deeper knowledge on how to execute and improve their skills.
Alita’s overall goal for her project is to learn about the similarities between two seemingly different topics.
She said, “I hope to learn about the importance of knowing the connections between topics like physics and ballet that normally aren’t associated with each other. Knowing how to work together will help dancers understand their movements and improve.”