STUDYING at a world famous ballet school and joining a professional company are the stuff of dreams for aspiring dancers. And now Maia Davis is on her way to achieving her dream. The 15-year-old girl has won a scholarship to a five-week summer course at the renowned School of American Ballet in New York. If she performs well, she will stay longer for more intense training. ''I am really happy. I didn't have much confidence that I would win because of keen competition,'' she said. Maia fell in love with ballet when she was a toddler, ''because of the beautiful costumes for the ballerinas''. She came to Hongkong from Hawaii in 1985 with her father who has been teaching at Chinese University, to join a junior ballet programme at Academy for Performing Arts (APA). Since then she has been busy flying between Hawaii and Hongkong for different ballet training programmes. She also joined a ballet summer training course in Beijing. ''I want to be in top ballet company but I know this will be very competitive. So I haveto work very hard,'' she said. Practice makes perfect. So Maia spends most of her time after school learning ballet. ''I spend 20 hours or 12 classes in ballet a week. In order to be good, I really have to practise as much as I can. ''I usually wake up at about 5.30 am because it's a long way to go to school. The school starts at 8 am and ends at 3 pm. After school I have to rush to the ballet lessons in APA and Mongkok,'' said Maia, a student of Chinese International School. Because of the ballet lessons, Maia does not have much time. She has to do homework usually on trains and buses on the way to the lessons. Different from most of her classmates, Maia spends most of her time on music, from ballet dancing and singing, to violin and piano playing. For many young people always complaining about the pressure of study, Maia may be a good example of how to cope with the pressure and excel academically while playing hard with music.
