Avery Denney, A dancer with the fire of “Kitri”

BY: KELLY MILNER HALLS

n January 2023, 17-year-old Avery Denney took first place in the Youth America Grand Prix senior division competition. Out of 145 classically trained ballet dancers, Avery went home with the prize.

What does it take to carry a dancer from her first ballet class to the top of her field at seventeen? Hard work, dedication and the support of a loving family.

Denney was two when her mother enrolled her in her first dance class. “Technically, it was a jazz class,” she says. “My mother says I spent the first class running around and screaming. But you’re not learning technique at that age. You’re just getting used to the discipline—managing your attention span for 30 minutes.”

Screams subsided as Denney found her place in the realm of dance. Those first classes in tap and jazz expanded to include ballet when Denney was six, and the dye was cast. “Everything about it captured me,” Denney says. “The outfits, the music, just everything.”

Denney had a natural aptitude for ballet. “I have natural talent in terms of flexibility and my feet,” she says. “My feet were super bendy and I had high arches. But hyper mobility is a blessing and a curse. It makes for very nice lines, but in general it means you’re weaker. Gaining strength is harder.”

Six-year-old Denney had very little control of her attributes. “I watched a video of me dancing and I was so long and gangling,” she recalls. “It was like watching a baby giraffe on roller skates.” Her fine tuning was yet to come, but the talent was clear.

One of her first teachers asked Denney the tough question when she was only eight. “She said, ‘If you want to do this professionally, you need to decide now.’ She wanted me to quit school and train with her all day. I thought, ‘If that’s what it takes, then I don’t know.’”

Denney’s parents—a tap dancing mother and a father with a background in football—didn’t pressure their little girl, but they did see the writing on the wall. The same year her teacher asked for a lifetime commitment, Denney’s mother got a more subtle signal.

“My mom knew this was it when I was still going to soccer. I stuck with that sport the longest. But when it was time to sign me up again as an eight-year-old, I told her, “No want to do more dance.”

The family found her a new teacher and from there Denney followed her bliss.

When the Eugene Ballet toured Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker in Spokane, 12-year-old Denney auditioned and was cast to perform the iconic Waltz of the Flowers. “I remember being backstage, watching the professionals. I felt like it was a dream come true. It didn’t seem real to me. When I watched the Sugar Plum pas de deux from the audience, I thought it was the most beautiful music I’d ever heard in my life.”

As a young champion today, Denney is certain ballet is her destiny. She hopes to land a spot in a professional company, to dance for a living and to one day perform in her dream roll—Kitri from Ludwig Minkus’s adaptation of Don Quixote.

“I have performed Kitri variations,” Denney says, “but never the full ballet. The roll is so spicy, so fiery. All of her solos are filled with leaps and jumps and I love jumps as much as I love Kitri’s personality.”

Denney has one more goal as a dancer—to be a Radio City Rockette in New York. “But I can’t be a Rockette until my ballet career is behind me.”

Judging from her passion and obvious skillset, the Rockette’s will have to wait. The world of ballet is a part of Avery Denney—and she’s destined to be a part of the world of ballet, too.

A Day in the life of Avery

What is the daily routine of a professional ballerina in the making? It’s as robust as you might have imagined.

Denney wakes at 8:00 am almost every day. She attends online college classes for the first few hours of her day, or works at Bou Cou Dancewear in Coeur d’Alene.

At about 3:00 pm, she goes to her first dance studio to practice ballet until 6:30 pm. Then she heads to her tap, jazz and hip hop studio to practice until 9:00 pm.

Once she’s home, she grabs dinner and does homework until midnight. No TV. No parties. No nonsense, other than hanging out with her parents, her sister (also a dancer) and her dog Nala, a twelve-year-old yellow lab.

She does have Sunday’s off, but she plays drums for her church’s worship team. So music still fills her day of “rest.”

And while she confirms eating disorders can be a danger in the world of dance, she has never had an issue with food herself. “How much do dancers actually eat?” she says. “Well I eat breakfast, a meal at 3:00, a meal at 6:00 and again when I get home at 9:00 pm. I try not to worry about it. If you obsess, you can slip into disorders more easily.”