Ballet
for
Ballers

Where the stage meets the court

Growing up in the Balkans, sports were never just entertainment. They were national pride. From a young age I developed a deep respect and appreciation for athletes, shaped by a culture where watching the game was a ritual. The chants, the roar of the crowd, the atmosphere that cannot be put into words, only felt. At the center of it all was my brother, a brilliant young basketball player with the potential for an international career. This was a young man who washed his basketball before bed so he could bounce it off the ceiling, driving me crazy since we shared a room, before falling asleep with the ball in his arms. We followed him from gym to gym, cheering as if our lives depended on it.

One summer, during a U.S. work-study program, he tore his ACL in a pickup game. Without the right guidance, a proper recovery strategy, or the financial means to access the level of care he needed, an injury that should have healed ended his dream instead. In the years that followed, I watched the same story play out across the sport, again and again. Athletes breaking down, careers quietly ending, the body changing the player forever. That is what led me to research how the discipline of ballet could protect them. One of my early inspirations was Kobe Bryant, who spoke at USC about the alignment of dance and sport, giving full respect to the discipline of dancers and how much athletes have to learn from them. Ballet for Ballers was born from all of it. A bridge between the raw strength of the court and the century-honed precision of classical ballet. Not only to enhance performance and make athletes more skillful, but to protect the career that skill is built on. Because with the right training, greatness can be protected before it is ever lost.

Srna is the creator and methodologist behind Ballet for Ballers and the founder of Ôtänamos INC, a New York–based dance nonprofit. She has always believed dance and science belong together — that movement, trained with intelligence, can change bodies, careers, and the way we understand what athletes are capable of.

She is a Ballet artist rigorously trained in the Vaganova Method, who spent 15 years as a corps member and soloist with the National Opera and Ballet in Macedonia, working alongside the highest establishments in ballet across Europe & USA.

As a pedagogue, methodologist, and choreographer with over two decades of artistic leadership, her work spans continents. With highlights including Monaco, Rome, Nice, to an original Off-Broadway production in New York, and notable appearances as performer and choreographer at the Rockefeller Center - Rainbow Room, Triad Theater, Battery Dance Festival, Eden Galleries, Bushwick Open Studios, City Tech BK, Macedonian Opera and Ballet, and many others.

She holds a degree in Methodology and Pedagogy of Classical Ballet and Contemporary Dance, and ran one of Manhattan's most sought-after luxury dance studios. Currently her focus is finding an academic home where she can get her PhD in Sport Science and bring her methodologies and syllabus into a full research.

In 2023 she founded Ôtänamos INC, a New York-based nonprofit delivering movement therapy in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Alzheimer's Association, the New York Academy of Medicine, and Hamilton-Madison House, producing measurable results across the most demanding physical and neurological conditions.

Most recently, collaboration was with EYBL Vegas Elite 17U 2026 team, from an initial two-day workshop to an ongoing collaboration as a traveling coach.