Marianela Nuñez said she fell in love with ballet and couldn't let it go, and that she still can't. That simple line, in a Financial Times interview, carries the whole weight of a life shaped by an art form that demands total devotion and leaves little room for anything else. She discussed her love for ballet, her journey in the dance world and the impact the art form has had on her life and identity as a dancer.
A life held by the art
Nuñez's account is personal, but it also says something about the disciplined worlds people are pushed into and then asked to call freedom. She described ballet not as a passing interest, but as something that took hold and stayed there. She said she couldn't let it go. She still can't. That kind of language matters. It points to a form of commitment that is intimate, consuming and hard to separate from identity itself.
The interview in the Financial Times centred on her love for ballet and the path she has taken through the dance world. The article did not present a policy debate or a public dispute. It presented a person speaking about the force of an art form in her life. Even so, the structure is familiar: institutions and elite cultural systems often turn devotion into discipline, and discipline into identity. Ballet, in this telling, is not just something Nuñez does. It is something that has shaped who she is.
Identity, labour, and the stage
Nuñez also spoke about the impact ballet has had on her life and identity as a dancer. That phrasing is plain, but it carries a lot. Identity here is not abstract. It is built through years in a demanding profession, through repetition, training and the expectations that come with being recognised in the dance world. The interview framed her experience through endurance and attachment, not detachment. She has stayed with ballet because it has stayed with her.
There’s no grand institutional statement in the article, no official line from a ministry or company, no announcement from a boardroom. Just a dancer describing the hold her craft has on her. Still, the fact that this appears in the Financial Times matters in its own way. The paper’s cultural pages often turn individual excellence into a polished story of personal journey, while the machinery around elite culture remains offstage. The audience gets the passion. The structure stays in the wings.
Nuñez's words are direct. She fell in love with ballet. She couldn't let it go. She still can't. That repetition gives the interview its force. It’s not a slogan. It’s a confession of attachment, and maybe of the cost that comes with it. The dance world, as she describes it, is not a casual place. It is a place that marks people deeply, and then asks them to keep going.
The article offers no broader political argument, no numbers, no institutional conflict. What it does offer is a glimpse of how a life can be organised around a demanding practice until the practice and the person seem inseparable. Ballet, in Nuñez's telling, isn't just a career. It's a force that has shaped her identity and stayed with her, whether she wanted it to or not.