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78 MAKING HER POINTE G illian Fitz is swanlike in a garnet leotard, her brunette hair slicked back in a French twist, her brow glimmering with sweat. The soles of her canvas ballet slippers are worn black — evidence of countless hours perfecting every plié, pirouette, and jeté in ballet's complicated lexicon of gravity-defying positions and steps. Throughout her 90-minute private lesson, as she contorts and extends with the help of a single metal barre, young ballerinas in black leotards and pink tights stand on tippy toe to catch a glimpse of the awe-inspiring talent. At 5 feet 9 inches, Fitz is tall by American ballet standards. She's lean and strong, with an old-world beauty that juxtaposes strength and grace in equal measure. You can tell this is a perfectionist. When given a correction to adjust the turnout of her hips or to shift her weight from one side to the other, she repeats the move until it is just right, her focus not once wavering. As she moves into a grand arabesque, her foot painstakingly pointed, she lifts her leg with such power and ease that it appears she could graze the ceiling. This hour and a half Fitz spent in a nondescript studio in Plano was one of the last ballet classes she took in the United States. The 19-year-old was in Dallas for a few weeks this summer to spend time with her parents, Nannette and Tracy Fitz (he's the longtime area director of sales and marketing for the Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek), before moving to Munich in August, where she joined the Bayerisches Staatsballett II as a junior company member for the 2017-2018 season. Joining a professional company is the natural next step in a 10-year long journey that began in Dallas, where Fitz trained with the Marina Almayeva School of Classical Ballet before moving to New York in 2015, for full-time professional training with New York's Ellison Ballet. Fitz is all but giddy about her upcoming European move. Neither tainted nor drained by a decade of training, injuries, and hard work, she still loves dance as much as she did when she first took the stage as a young girl. As the conversation transitions to her career, enthusiasm ensues. She spent several weeks this spring making her first European voyage to audition for numerous companies. When asked why she decided to pursue a career oversees, Fitz is blunt. "American companies typically want shorter dancers," she says. Gillian Fitz BY CHRISTINA GEYER. PHOTOGRAPHY VASILIS ARGYROPOULOS. "European companies like taller dancers." But body type and dance style aside, the thrill of dancing for one of Germany's most renowned companies comes from its repertoire. She rapidly lists classical ballets the company will perform this year: Onegin, La Bayadere, Giselle, Romeo and Juliet, Don Quixote, Anna Karenina, La Fille Mal Gardée. She wants to dance them all — but this, she acknowledges, will take time, and require more of the intense, hard-willed perseverance that has brought her this far. After all, her goal is long-range: first succeed in the junior company, become a member of the main company's corps de ballet, then, a principal — the prima ballerina she's always envisioned herself becoming. "There are times you want to break, but you can't," Fitz says. Of course, many dancers do break, as ballet is as grueling mentally as it is physically, making it rare for a toddler ballerina in a pink tutu to blossom into a proficient Black Swan Odile. "It looks easy, what I'm doing, but it's not," she says. "It's painful."