
The lovely Alberto, dancer with Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, has dropped in to tell us all about his summer in New York City!
Hello lovely people of Dance Consortium!
It’s Nina writing…yes, Nina Immobilashvili. Also known as Alberto Pretto. Or Alby for my closest friends. I am 29 years old, was born in Italy and moved to the States about 5 years ago.
I have been with the company for 5 years, basically since I moved to NY, and this will be my 4th tour in the UK!
I am looking forward to it, but we’ll talk about this later. Let me first update you on what has been going on with me.
Grab a cup of coffee if you’d like, or maybe tea if it’s 5 o’clock, and why not? Some scones too 🙂

I am writing from NYC, I came back from tour a week ago . We were in Japan for 4 weeks. It has been a great run, audiences were really responsive, everyone from the Japanese staff was really sweet and helpful! I met a lot of fantastic people, one in particular: Ai Haruna. She was our promoter for the Japan Tour 2015, and did a special cameo appearance as the Dying Swan during one of our shows. I was really impressed of how good she was! And how sweet. At the end of the shows in Tokyo we were all invited at Ai’s restaurant for a fabulous dinner with everyone from the crew. I had such a fantastic time! Everyone was so fun, after dinner we even had an impromptu lipsync show, and maybe because of the wine, I felt really emotional toward Ai. She is such a beautiful human being…it’s inspiring to see her so comfortable around everyone. The Trocks love you Ai!

We had the best time in Japan: we danced a lot, but we also had many days off to enjoy and visit this fascinating country. At the end of every tour, I take one week off to catch up with friends, rest my body, and get my mind off ballet for a bit.
It has been a very good time, the weather in NY was not too warm, just perfect! I hung out with my friends, performed in drag at a local bar, cleaned up my apartment really good, and took care of my dance wear business. I make ballet leotards and t-shirts. The t-shirts have pictures of famous dancers that I hand draw and then have them printed down. I had many orders while I was on tour, so last week was all about running around having these t-shirts finished and shipped out. Misty Copeland’s promotion to principal with ABT contributed to many orders of the Misty t-shirt, so I had to stress about finishing everything in a short time frame.
I had not danced at all, but I took class today for the first time, in preparation for next week. I have quite a few things coming up ( I always have to do a million things at a time) and I need to get back in shape before it’s too late!
I booked some studios for private rehearsals and to videotape some new ballet tutorials. I started my video tutorials project on Youtube about 3 years ago, and since then I had a lot of positive responses. Due to my intensive touring schedule I haven’t had the time to make new videos, so while I was in Japan I made the decision to make new ones. Also, while in Tokyo, me and my friend Jack decided to go take an open class during one of our days off. We took class at Architanz with this very good french teacher, and after class a cute Japanese guy approached me and asked me if I was Albypretty (the name of my YouTube channel). He said he followed me and enjoyed watching my videos! I thought it was so nice of him, and it made me so happy that I booked the studios in NYC to shoot some new videos.
So next week I will be busy shooting these videos. What I do is I teach the steps of a female variation on point, and then perform it in full ballerina attire! It is a lot of fun to be sharing what I know to people on the net, and hopefully it will help some young aspiring ballerinas out there, especially young boys that feel the need of wearing point shoes but think they are misunderstood. Don’t worry young Trockaderos, you are not alone! 🙂
Starting in the middle of August I will be teaching at the Summer Intensive of FAB ( French Academy of Ballet) here in NYC.

I have been selected to be part of the Faculty among other very talented and renowned teachers, and I am so excited to be a part of it! François Perron is the artistic director of FAB, and he has been a sort of mentor for me since I came to NYC. I remember taking classes during previous summer intensives, variation on point with Misty Copeland, Irina Dovorvenko, Karin Averty…It was so amazing! Now I get to be on the other side and teach what I have to give to a new generation of students! The fun part is they assigned me female variations! I am preparing by myself to be top shape and not disappoint anyone. I will be teaching some Paquita and Sleeping Beauty. it’s really amazing I will get to share with the students the experience that I got from dancing some of these roles on stage! I really hope I will help them in their future career but above it all I would like to be able to inspire them! That’s my big goal. Because when you inspire someone you really acheived something important. At the end of the month, after 3 weeks of teaching, it will finally be rehearsal time for the Trocks!

I am really looking forward to this time. Generally our rehearsal period is very intense and challenging, but it also allows me as a dancer to push myself even further, to perfection steps under the attentive eyes of the direction, and to experiment with new roles and future opportunities. Ambition is very important for every dancer, and rehearsal time is also when the director thinks of changes. So every second of it is very important. Keep your eyes open, never rest, always practice, it will be worth all the sweat and the pain one day!
We are going to set up all the program for the upcoming UK tour, as well as new pieces we are working on for the future. We have a couple of very exciting ballets to stage, but I am not gonna spoil the surprise, you shall see with your eyes!
I think that’s about it for this time, thank you so very much for staying with me, I hope I didn’t bore you too much!
Looking forward to see you all in September in the UK!
Yours truly, Nina aka Alberto xoxo