This is Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls.

Hi, Rebels. This is Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, the interview. I'm your host, Pepper, and today we're talking to dancer, choreographer, and singer Gianina Palantonia.

Welcome, Gianina. Can you please tell our audience a little bit about yourself.

Hi, everyone. I'm Gianina. I'm a dancer, a choreographer, a singer, all the things. I love to be a

triple threat ever since I was a little girl. I am currently living out my dreams in Los Angeles,

California as a newly

20-year-old woman. And I'm so excited to be talking to you today. We're so happy you're here.

Okay, so tell us, how did you first fall in love with dance? Was there a moment when you thought,

okay, this is my thing? It really all stems from the fact that my mom is a dance teacher for 35 years now. So the second that I was in the world, I immediately was put in a dance class and was going to the studio with her. And when I was about five years old, so when I did my first solo at my recital on stage and also at competition, there was something a little different about me in the dance studio or just in general

when I was learning dances and things that I would pick up. And they saw something different

to me. I definitely felt something different. And I knew that that's where I was definitely

meant to be and what I was meant to be doing. So I've been doing it ever since. Wow, it really

sounds like you were born to do this. You started performing on Broadway and Matilda at just nine years old.

That's a big deal.

Did you ever get stage fright performing in front of so many people?

Okay, surprisingly no, which was very weird, obviously, because I was so young.

I got more afraid to do dance competitions at that age.

Broadway felt like home to me after doing it so many

times. I think I performed in Matilda like 550-something times. But I didn't get stage fright,

and I think that was the most beautiful part about it, is that it didn't feel like that because

I had a bunch of family next to me and behind me dancing with me, all feeling the same emotions.

And so it felt like I was at home.

...