A Waterdown dancer is one graceful movement closer to achieving her dream of becoming a prima ballerina after receiving her first professional contract with a company in Russia.

Lara Paraschiv was a late comer to ballet but spent the last four years making up for it through education and dedication.

"I started ballet training when I was 16 so in comparison to Russians who have eight years, I only have four, but I kind of sped tracked my training by being very disciplined to train every day, no days off, no summers off,” she said of the early years.

The diligence of doing her stretching and conditioning twice a day worked and now, after her first year of auditioning for companies all over the world including France, Germany and Belgium, Paraschiv has earned her spot in the Astrakhan Opera and Ballet as a company dancer.

The young ballerina started her journey in professional dance at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy and developed a love and passion for the Voganova method, which involves the whole body to promote more expression in the performance. It was art through graceful movement and was a classical dance Paraschiv relished.

She moved on to a classical ballet in Brooklyn, N.Y., but only stayed for six months. "I was looking for pure Russian training," she said, explaining the training offered south of the border was vastly different from her classical training with a more athletic approach. Soon, she found the long, elongated muscles she cultivated at Bolshoi were becoming bulkier.

“I didn’t like how my body was shaping and how it was responding to this training.”

She explained that while the American training was helping in some aspects, such as learning to become versatile, it was simultaneously regressing her skills.

Paraschiv returned to Canada and enlisted a private trainer in Toronto who helped her get back on her personal track to success.

The local dancer is now "en pointe" to joining Russia's Astrakhan Opera and Ballet with a contract set to begin next month.