Midori Saito: Dance

Midori Saito has been dancing for more than 12 years, specializing in ballet. However, even though it’s been a huge part of her life, she hasn’t always enjoyed dancing. At first, Saito only went to ballet because her mom put her into a dance class as a child. “When I was younger, I hated (ballet),” she said. “My mom put me in it because when she was younger she originally wanted to do ballet, but there (were) no ballet schools near her.” Her love for the sport didn’t come until much later. “It was in seventh grade that I really had a spark, and it was because I watched a dancer called Marianela Nunez,” Saito said. “I was just so amazed by how she (stayed) so in character (when she played) two very polar opposite characters. I was like, “Oh my God, how’d she do that?” Everything about the way she danced just made me want to do that too.”

Saito feels a freedom to convey her feelings to the audience while dancing. “I enjoy (ballet) because I feel like it’s a way for me to express myself,” she said. “I find that I’m not very good at describing myself in words, and that it’s much easier for me to do it non-verbally.”

However, Saito’s dance journey hasn’t always been easy. “I don’t have the ideal ballerina physique, and that’s been an obstacle within myself,” she said. “When

I was younger, I was much more confident myself, but once I got to high school, I started to lose a lot of that confidence.” Despite these challenges, Saito has been working on pushing past her self-doubts, even choreographing her own piece titled “Experience.” “(‘Experience’) was about my confidence,” she said. “The piece started with me having this confidence, but then I started to lose it. I was really scared about it and wanted to throw everything away, but then in the end I was able to regain it. There was kind of a story to it. That was definitely a really special piece to me because it definitely still resonates with me, and it was a piece that really represented me at the time.”

For the future, Saito’s goal is to go professional, but also gain a college education. “I want to do one or two years of just ballet, and then after that, I want to do online school and major in physiology kinesiology or psychology,” she said. “But ultimately, I want to go professional for as long as possible.”

—Written by Katie Shih