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Saudi Ballerina Halaa Nagadi is Redefining Grace in Riyadh
Saudi Ballerina Halaa Nagadi is Redefining Grace in Riyadh
Her pointe shoes are not just instruments of grace. They are the tools of a young woman carving out a space where none existed for herself, and for others who come after her.
Behind the structure of pliés and arabesques, beneath the shimmer of stage lights and satin shoes, is a young woman who describes herself as 'a calm soul with a heart full of thoughts.' That woman is Halaa Nagadi - Saudi Arabia's first prima ballerina. But when you speak with her, the language of ambition gently unravels; the word 'first' fades. Her conquest is not one for titles, as she is a soft seeker of connection.
'I love stillness,' she tells SceneNowSaudi. 'Not because I'm quiet, but because I feel everything deeply. I think a lot. I dream a lot. I'm always trying to understand myself and the world around me.'
Nineteen-year-old Halaa Nagadi fastens her pointe shoes in a borrowed Riyadh studio - a converted gymnasium where concrete floors bear the scuffs of her revolutions. Without access to formal classes, Halaa's early training happened in the margins, through YouTube videos, documentaries, and film clips of dancers who felt a world away. "I began with online videos." No barres, no mirrors, just a girl teaching herself pliés in a bedroom. "Staying consistent is half the result," she learnt in those solitary years. "You have to be patient and keep showing up."
When asked about ballet's first spark, her reply holds the heat of epiphany: "Ballet awakened a side of me that I had been searching for my whole life. It made me feel like I finally found what makes me special." No grand theatre witnessed this revelation - just pixels on a phone. The family's support came softly. "There was support, even though the path wasn't clear or guaranteed.'
Her family watched this quiet rebellion unfold - bewildered, yet tender. "They still believed in me," she offers, a fragile faith held like a moth's wing. Whilst studying tourism at King Abdulaziz University, she carved ballet into the cracks of her days: 5:30 AM conditioning, lectures on event management, online teaching sessions, then studio drills until her feet bled into dusk. "I allow myself to take breaks and breathe," she insists, though her schedule suggests otherwise. Even pioneers need stillness.
When her nervous system tightens during an arabesque, she breathes into the resistance: "I've learnt to give my body time. Growth isn't a race." Critics murmur about ballet's European roots, but her retort is blade-sharp. "If someone thinks ballet doesn't belong here? That's their limitation, not ours. Art doesn't come with borders." She dances where others see contradiction, reshaping tradition with every tendu. "I'm still fully myself," she reflects, "just using a different language."
Abroad, she tasted ballet as an institution - London masterclasses with the Royal Ballet's principal, and Romanian intensives where professionalism hung thick as stage fog. Back home, she stitches it into Saudi soil. At the Taif Rose Festival, she wove fouettés with oud strings - a cultural alchemy that silenced doubters. "I'm reshaping ballet within my own context," she observes. "It's reinvention." Her ambition glows quietly: founding an academy where Vaganova rigour meets Saudi vision. "With guidance from the Royal Ballet," she specifies. No compromises. Only excellence.
Yet behind the curtain, unseen weights press. "People don't see the cost - emotional, physical, financial," she reveals. "Access to training feels like a luxury, not a right." Mid-pirouette, doubt sometimes whispers: "Maybe I can't." Then she remembers: "This journey is for me. It's what makes me feel alive."
For the ten-year-old girl pressing palms to a studio window in Abaya, she leaves this: "She can do it. Never give up, as long as it makes her happy." For her country, a bolder truth: "We aren't waiting for permission to define our culture. We shape it." And for herself - the introvert who found eloquence in motion - a quiet manifesto: "Softness is strength. Kindness is power."
Somewhere, a child mimics her reflection in a mirror. The international stage lights haven't found her yet. But the door is open. "I want to be remembered not just for what I did," Halaa says, "but for how I made people feel."
And in the gathering dark, the music begins again.
