USD Magazine Summer 2012

t the barre, Vincent Padilla doesn’t try to stand out. He’s just one guy in a GRACE IN MOTION F o r V i n c e n t P a d i l l a , m e r e t a l e n t i s n ’ t e n o u g h by Sandra Millers Younger [ l i t h e s o m e ] A

“I like hard physical work, and ballet is so physically demand- ing,” he says. “And I like precision. When I execute things correctly, it feels really good. For me it’s like the exhilaration you feel when your team wins the Super Bowl. You’re pumped up on adrenaline; endorphins are shooting around; you’re excited.” Audiences catch that excitement watching Padilla perform. Whether portraying the prince levitating into an aerial split in “The Nutcracker,” a gritty street gangster in “West Side Story” or a strolling tap dancer at Legoland, Padilla throws everything he has into each role, and it shows. He was only four when his mother, herself a dancer and dance instructor, took him to tap lessons at the neighborhood rec center. “I wasn’t super interested,” he admits. But five years later when the curtains opened on his first profes- sional appearance — in “The Mu- sic Man” at San Diego’s venerable

USD. “One thing I learned fromphi- losophy is if you want something you don’t have now, you have to do something different,” he says. Padilla’s personal credo, like his work, draws from disparate sources. He references Friedrich Nietzsche’s emphasis on personal choice, Dale Carnegie’s belief in self-development and a former ballet master’s mantra: “The only true talent is the ability to work.” Dance, of course, requires all three. Choosing to dance as a career is committing to a life of relentless practice and continual improvement. And that’s exactly what Padilla loves about it.

Off-stage, Padilla is equally flexible, equally disciplined. Which explains how, at age 24, he’s already achieved what many covet — a career that combines multiple passions. He dances with the California Ballet, a professional company based in San Diego. He has taught at a top ballet academy, as well as San Diego City Park and Recreation centers, where he got his start. And he’s a budding businessman, an independent consultant for a legal- services corporation. Padilla ’10 found reason and will to pursue his eclectic lifestyle in the study of philosophy, his major at

huge rehearsal room full of men in black tights and torso-hugging T-shirts; women in dark leotards, pink tights and hair neatly coiled atop their heads. But there’s something different about Padilla. It’s the way he holds himself, his slight frame straight yet supple. It’s the chiseled cut of his muscles, the perfect grace and control each time he bends an arm, extends a leg, points a toe. Every movement is both artistry and athleticism, a practiced blend of precision and poetry.

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