Of all the holiday specials coming to CBC this winter, The Curse of Clara: A Holiday Tale is a special one. The setting is Toronto's National Ballet School, during the annual production of The Nutcracker, and among the animated TV special's producers is a dance icon, and former National Ballet of Canada principal dancer, Veronica Tennant.

Fifty-three years ago, Tennant was still a student at the National Ballet School herself, but on this day in 1962, CBC's Take 30 invited the star pupil to be a special guest on their program. A soft-spoken teenager, a year away from joining the National Ballet of Canada's company, Tennant talked about her disciplined routine as an artist in-training.

"A dancer's life is not glamorous, it's very hard work," she says in the video, but from a very young age, she'd been dedicated to the art.

"I think right away, I just realized this is what I wanted," Tennant tells host, Anna Cameron.

"A really good dancer, she has to move her audience, and feel her audience and the roles that she dances. She's not just a dancer, she's an interpreter of life," Tennant says in the clip. "You're learning to dance so you can give to other people."