Young man shares work as a bricklayer with ballet in Ribeirão Preto Pedro Batista, 21, spends most of the day amidst the dust and noise of the construction site, as a bricklayer's assistant in Ribeirão Preto (SP), but he has enough energy not to miss ballet rehearsals at a dance school where he got a scholarship. For a year now, this has been the young man's routine, who depends on construction work to support himself while he pursues his dream of being a professional dancer, despite the prejudices he faces on both sides. A dream that gained an important chapter in recent weeks, when he received confirmation that he was selected to participate in the Joinville Dance Festival (SC), the largest in the country. Click here to follow the g1 Ribeirão e Franca channel on WhatsApp "Dance is basically my life, it's my passion, it's everything I want, everything I want in my life is around dance. Dance is basically everything", he says. Pedro Batista, dancer and bricklayer's assistant in Ribeirão Preto (SP). Serginho Oliveira/EPTV Passion since childhood Pedro says that his passion for dancing began in his childhood, with the hip hop clips he watched on the internet and from which he learned his first steps. "I always found the question of how they moved very interesting. I started with hip hop. I trained at home, I trained by watching videos on YouTube, because I found it very interesting", he says. Until recently, this was the language he most used to express himself until he discovered ballet when he received his first role in a show and a scholarship from a traditional dance school in the city. It was enough for a turning point and a change of mentality. READ ALSO Works by Candido Portinari will have an unprecedented exhibition in the largest museum in China; see details Adapted backpack, special glasses and trips of up to 60 km: cyclist goes viral after cycling with shih-tzu on his back in the interior of SP "At that moment I realized how complicated ballet was. Because in my head, ballet was something boring, it was slow, calm. It's that prejudice we have. But from the moment I started training in real ballet, I saw that it really was what I wanted." The difficulty imposed by the rules and discipline required was the decisive ingredient for Pedro to fall in love with ballet. "I'm having to take everything I've learned to learn something new." Pedro Batista's routine is divided between construction work and ballet rehearsals in Ribeirão Preto (SP). Serginho Oliveira/EPTV The young man confesses that, since then, getting through the day has become more tiring with the commitment he made to rehearsals. But learning pays off, guarantees Pedro. "It's been quite exhausting, even though it's quite tiring, I feel much better here than if I were at home, resting or sleeping. (...) As much as it's quite complicated to reconcile the two, it turns out that here is therapy for me." Reconciling the two activities also meant he had to deal with the prejudice of some. On the one hand, on the part of fellow workers who still think that men cannot dance ballet. "There's a lot, from both worlds, in fact. Because in the work, we suffer a little prejudice because we're dancing. Men dancing ballet are a little more frowned upon." On the other hand, some ballet colleagues, who discredit Pedro's initiative to improve in ballet just because he is a bricklayer's assistant. "In ballet I feel a little bit of this prejudice when I say that I work on site, because it seems like I'm invalidating what I'm doing here. It's like I'm, I don't know, like I'm wasting time, like I want to play here, you know? I feel that a lot from others." Pedro Batista discovered a passion for ballet and decided to dedicate himself to the sport in Ribeirão Preto (SP). Serginho Oliveira/EPTV Despite all the prejudice he has faced, Pedro states that, when reconciling the two worlds, he discovered more similarities with his job as a bricklayer than he imagined. "Both require strength, both require technique, because if you end up doing something on site, you'll get hurt too. They're worlds apart, but whether you like it or not, they're very similar. So, I use a lot of what I learn on site here and a lot of things I learn here on site too", he says. The dance festival Pedro says he has already participated in more than 20 dance festivals, but none of them as big as the Joinville Festival (SC), which takes place in July. Selected with his colleagues to participate in the event, the young man can't wait to be there and, far beyond the competition, share experiences with others. "It's considered the biggest competition in the world by the Guinness Book. In terms of the number of dancers who go, the number of people who will be in that place, so much choreography and everything. It's the biggest dance festival in the world. Every dancer from Brazil, from Latin America, without exception, wants to be there." While he is looking forward to the festival, Pedro has calculated how much he will spend on accommodation, transport, food and is racing against time to save enough money. To this end, in addition to working as a bricklayer's assistant, he has been doing odd jobs. "I'm working a lot, working on the side, working as a waiter, selling sweets too. I'm working on the side, partying, dancing for the DJ too." Pedro Batista works as a bricklayer's assistant to support himself and takes ballet classes in Ribeirão Preto (SP). Sérgio Oliveira/EPTV See more news from the region on g1 Ribeirão Preto e Franca VIDEOS: Everything about Ribeirão Preto, Franca and the region