A ballet dancer is considered en pointe when she is supporting herself only on the tips of her toes, educing a sylphlike look of weightlessness. While graceful and a delight for audiences, the move is also one of the most notoriously difficult to execute in all of dance, if not the most painful. Ballet can be an unforgiving art form. Yet, “that’s when I love ballet the most and remember why I dance,” reflects Cascade High School senior Eleanor “Ellie” Holm.
Ellie first put on ballet slippers in preschool. And now, Holm’s long tenure within the Cascade School District and at Leavenworth’s Edelweiss Dance Academie are racing toward simultaneous conclusions. This spring, she will engage in her last barre work at Edelweiss and graduate from CHS as an honors student, a class and club officer, and a key member of the championship Knowledge Bowl team. It is also worth noting that she has done all the foregoing while working part-time jobs the last few years.
Holm was raised in Leavenworth’s Sunitsch Canyon where her father is director of Tierra Retreat Center. Her mother coordinates, and is a teacher for, Cascade Home Link, an outdoor focused alternative learning program for students in grades K-8. So, it may have been predictable that Ellie would be a strong student who, in addition to dance, loves outdoor pursuits. “Other than while dancing, I think Ellie is most happy when she has a book in her hand, is on a hike, or is about to board a plane,” recounts her sister Georgia Holm, a CHS freshman.
Senior Rhetta Cummings laughs as she recalls that although she and Ellie have been in school and dance together since “before elementary school,” her first real memory is “showing up to school in third grade wearing the same dress as Ellie. We were fast friends from then on.” When detailing how she would describe Holm, Cummings reveals that she “loves her creative style in both the way she dresses and her art. She inspires me to be more creative.”
That sense of creativity, and a valuing of self-expression, has been central to Holm’s life and life-plan. So, it is not a surprise that she is currently self-studying AP Art History and plans to forego the traditional college path next year for the exceptional: to continue to study art history at John Cabot University, an American university in Rome, Italy along the Tiber River not far from Vatican City and the Roman Forum. After two years at John Cabot, Holm intends to return to the U.S. to finish her post-secondary education.
Opting to take the path less traveled is certainly one of Ellie’s characteristics, but “what really sets her apart is her drive,” according to Edelweiss Dance Academie’s owner and instructor, Briar Hoper. “She really loves dancing and has been thoroughly dedicated to the practice of it,” continued Hoper. “Ellie has taken multiple classes a week, competed in solo competitions, and played almost every role in [the studio’s annual signature holiday performance at the Snowy Owl Theatre,] The Nutcracker. She always brings great character to the stage.” Hoper then paused and concluded that the “one thing I enjoy most, though, is that she is a leader in the studio, helping younger students, encouraging them to grow.”
“She knows herself and isn’t afraid to live life the way she wants to."
Holm has herself grown, amidst the natural grandeur of the Upper Valley, into an equally ambitious young woman ready to tackle the world. “She knows herself and isn’t afraid to live life the way she wants to,” averred Cummings. The confidence that comes with living life well, whether that be, in the case of Holm, pirouetting en point, helping to run CHS’s senior class ASB effectively, or preparing for post-CHS life in Europe, will surely guide her days ahead.
Guidance – or words of wisdom – Holm leaves for CHS underclassmen is “to always believe in yourself and don’t necessarily follow the crowd no matter how difficult that may seem. You might be amazed at where you end up!” These are wise words for all Kodiaks from a senior who is living them out.