I am a ballet dancer

Shana Dewey is a senior member of Joburg Ballet's corps de ballet. 'I started ballet when I was four and my mom kept me in ballet. I was quite hyper-active so I didn’t really enjoy it in the beginning, and then something just switched and I fell in love with it and decided to pursue it as my career.' She mentions the difficulty of working in her industry. 'As a ballet dancer, the pay isn’t great; you have to love it to do it. A lot of people think ballet is just a hobby and don’t consider it a job, they think we play around in the studio all day.'