Dozens of little girls across the world dream of becoming ballerinas. For many of those girls, that dream gradually dissolves as they develop other interests. For one girl, however, the dream never wavered.

Bonnie Pickard, a professional ballerina who will play the Sugar Plum Fairy in the upcoming 25th-anniversary production of “The Nutcracker,” says she has wanted to dance her whole life.

“I get to do what I love for a living,” Pickard says. “Work is fulfilling my passion.”

Pickard, who has been taking ballet lessons since she was 5, trained at the Dayton Ballet School in Ohio under Barbara Pontecorvo. Pickard began her professional career right after graduating from high school and has been dancing ever since.

The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., has been the venue for most of Pickard’s recent performances. While working at the recent Kennedy Center Honors performance, Pickard was lucky enough to meet Robert Redford, John Kerry and many other celebrities. She says five people from the arts were honored so a lot of celebrities came to the performance.

“Beyonce, Oprah, Queen Latifah, Glenn Close – huge-name people were there,” she says.

Pickard says the people in the audience can add pressure to the performance.

“Every stage is different; some stages are more high-pressure because the audience knows more about dance,” Pickard says. “They are much more knowledgeable and critical. But wherever you go, you are always trying to do your best.”

Pickard says preparing for these performances is somewhat taxing on the body. Practicing six days a week, she stays in shape by following a healthy diet, even though she doesn’t worry much when she is constantly dancing. Instead, she says her worries lie mostly in the cold Iowa weather, since temperatures have often dipped below freezing.

“It makes it harder to get warmed up when it’s so cold; it takes a lot longer to get the body going,” Pickard says. “Hopefully, it won’t be that cold in the theater.”

When Pickard arrives in Iowa, she and Momchil Mladenov, a Bulgarian-born dancer, will have their first chance to practice with the ballet’s cast, which is approximately 200 dancers from central Iowa. Pickard says she doesn’t know what to expect about the audience or stage, but hopes the theater will have a friendly feel and the audience will be excited for the show.

Before each performance, Pickard says she spends approximately two hours preparing. That time includes putting on her costume, doing hair and makeup, and warming up.

She gets an hour in the evening to eat a quick dinner at the Canteen in the Kennedy Center and usually takes a nap on the floor of her dressing room before she begins to prepare for the evening performance.

After performing for approximately two hours, Pickard returns home around 11 p.m. and wakes up the next morning to repeat the cycle again.

This type of career is very taxing both emotionally and physically.

“It’s a challenge, but anything good is worth working at,” Pickard says.

Pickard says a typical ballerina retires by age 40 at the latest, but most ballerinas retire almost a decade earlier.

She says instead of focusing on the future, she tries to live in the moment, doing what she loves.

“After this, I don’t know – we’ll see,” says Pickard, “It will be another life altogether.”