What happens next?
At the end of July dancers across the country put gowns over their tutus and donned caps in order to graduate. After years of hard work, they will soon be joining dance companies, schools and theatre productions all over the world. Britain’s dance schools and colleges have a brilliant reputation with often up to 97% of their students acquiring contracts or finding permanent employment within twelve months. So we thought we’d look up some of these graduates to find out what they did next!
One of this year’s biggest success stories is nineteen year old Victoria Paine from Cleethorpes. Proficient in Classic Ballet, Neoclassic, Contemporary, Dance Theatre and Jazz she is a former member of Lesley Swaby Dance School in Grimsby. At sixteen she started attending the Central School of Ballet, however, and graduated this year with a BA (Hons) in Professional Dance and Performance validated by the University of Kent. Along with her fellow dancer Michaela Guibarra she has secured a contract with the Worldwide Tour of the Phantom of the Opera, which opened in Singapore on July 16th. Lee Hay, another graduate of the Central School of Ballet, has also acquired a role in the West End as the understudy to the lead in Billy Elliot. All three should be used to touring and dancing in front of big audiences, however, having been part of the Central School of Ballet’s touring company, Ballet Central, which performed at some of the country’s biggest venues during the five month period. This is a spectacular achievement, however, and is sure to be extremely exciting!
Graduates of the Royal Ballet School have also done exceedingly well over the past few years. In 2012 twenty-nine students were offered professional contracts with companies from Paris to Vienna. Sean Bates, silver medallist at the 2010 Genée International Ballet Competition and winner of second place in the Young British Dancer of the Year awards in 2009, was one of these. Along with Mariana Rodrigus and Isaac Lee-Barker he joined the Northern Ballet and has featured in some of their key productions including The Great Gatsby. This year Thomas Edwards, of the Central Ballet School, has signed a permanent contract with Scottish Ballet while Jack Cussans is to become a member of the New English Ballet Theatre.
Many graduates this year will be going on to join companies across the world. On September 1st twenty year old Joshua Earl from Epping in Essex will be joining the National Ballet of Portugal in Lisbon. His classmate Oliver Jones will be starting at the Grant Ballet of Poznan in Poland and Haruka So will be returning to Japan to work at the Nippon Ballet Academy.
Dancewear Central would like to congratulate all the dancers that graduated this year and wish them the best of luck in their future careers.