By: Alva Ree
From a little girl dancing to music at home to competing on some of the world’s most prestigious ballroom floors, Anastasia Modebadze’s story is one of discipline, dedication, and a dream that continues to grow.
Some dreams begin with a grand plan. Others reveal themselves quietly, in the way a child moves when music starts playing, in the hours spent dancing simply because standing still feels impossible.
For Anastasia Modebadze, dance was there almost from the beginning.
Born on September 7, 2013, in the picturesque city of Colmar, France, Anastasia showed an instinctive connection to music and movement from an early age. Long before competitions, elaborate costumes, medals, or international travel became part of her life, she would spend hours creating her own performances at home.
Her mother noticed something more than childhood playfulness.
“Even when she was very young, I could see how naturally she responded to music,” she recalls. “She could dance for hours, inventing her own little performances. I felt that art was already living inside her.”
When the family later returned to Georgia, that natural passion presented an important question: how could they give Anastasia the opportunity to develop her talent while allowing her to discover what dance could truly mean in her life?
The answer came when she was just four or five years old.
After careful consideration, the family chose Tea Gobejishvili’s Dance Academy, where Anastasia began training in sport Latin American dance. At the time, it was simply a decision to give a talented young girl the right environment to grow. No one could have predicted how defining that choice would become.
What followed was not an overnight success story. It was years of consistent work.
Behind the sparkling costumes, elegant performances, photographs, trophies, and applause are countless hours of training. There have been difficult rehearsals, emotional moments, physical exhaustion, tears, setbacks, and the constant demand to improve.
Those experiences have shaped Anastasia far beyond the dance floor.
Dance has taught her patience and discipline. It has taught her how to continue when something does not work the first time, how to accept correction, and how to transform disappointment into motivation.
Today, training occupies a central place in Anastasia’s life. She practices almost every day, usually taking only one or two days off each week. School is often followed immediately by dance lessons, while preparation for major competitions can make the schedule even more demanding.
As international tournaments approach, the family’s entire routine changes. Additional sessions are introduced, preparation becomes more intensive, and the hours devoted to dance increase.
Sometimes competitions, training camps, and preparation for important performances even require Anastasia to miss school.
It is a demanding lifestyle for someone so young. Yet what stands out most to her mother is not the difficulty of the schedule, but her daughter’s attitude toward it.
“Even during the most challenging periods, I have never heard her complain,” she says. “Instead, I see more determination in her eyes. She wants to work harder, become better, and continue growing.”
The Coach Behind the Journey
No young athlete or artist builds a career entirely alone, and one of the most important figures in Anastasia’s development has been her coach, Vera Jajanidze.
For Anastasia’s mother, the relationship carries a special meaning. Jajanidze was once someone she admired from afar, watching her through a screen. Years later, she became the person entrusted with helping shape her daughter as a dancer.
That transition still feels remarkable.
But Jajanidze’s role extends far beyond teaching choreography or perfecting technique.
To the family, she represents the kind of coach whose emotional investment in her students is inseparable from her professional work. She experiences the pressure of competitions alongside them, celebrates their achievements, supports them through difficult performances, and continues demanding more when she knows they are capable of it.
“Every time her students step onto the floor, I feel that her heart is there with them,” Anastasia’s mother says. “She gives so much of herself to every student.”
Under Jajanidze’s guidance, Anastasia has continued to develop not only her technical abilities, but also the confidence necessary to perform internationally.
That work has already taken the young dancer far beyond Georgia.
From Georgia to the International Stage
Despite her young age, Anastasia has participated in numerous international tournaments, competing in Spain, Italy, Poland, and the United Kingdom.
Each trip represents much more than another competition.
It means weeks and months of preparation, unfamiliar surroundings, new competitors, pressure, and the responsibility of stepping onto an international floor representing her academy, her coach, and her country.
Among those experiences, Blackpool holds particular significance.
For generations of ballroom dancers, Blackpool has represented something almost mythical, a place associated with tradition, excellence, and some of the most celebrated names in dance. For a young competitor, simply stepping onto that floor can become a milestone in itself.
Anastasia has already competed in the United Kingdom three times: once in London and twice in Blackpool, including The Open Worlds, Blackpool. This year, she once again achieved prize-winning results.
For her mother, watching Anastasia compete there carries a special emotion.
She still remembers the little girl dancing freely at home, with no idea where that love of movement might eventually take her. Now she watches the same girl walk onto internationally recognized competition floors alongside young dancers from around the world.
The distance between those two moments was built one rehearsal at a time.
A Dream Still Being Written
It would be easy to tell Anastasia’s story through medals and placements alone. But perhaps its most important chapter is not about what she has already won.
It is about the person she is becoming in pursuit of those victories.
At only 12 years old, Anastasia is learning lessons that extend far beyond dance: that talent requires discipline, that beautiful results often come from difficult work, and that meaningful dreams are rarely achieved all at once.
They are built gradually.
One practice. One competition. One correction. One difficult day. One small victory at a time.
Her mother remains deeply grateful to the academy and to Vera Jajanidze for walking alongside the family throughout that journey.
And while international tournaments and Blackpool already mark extraordinary milestones for such a young dancer, no one in Anastasia’s family sees them as the conclusion of her story.
They are the beginning.
There are new countries to visit, new floors to dance on, new challenges to overcome, and dreams that today may still feel impossibly far away.
For the girl who once simply danced around her home because she loved the music, every step has already carried her somewhere new.
And perhaps that is how the biggest dreams are ultimately reached, not through one extraordinary leap, but through thousands of small, determined steps.
