It has been a while coming, but I've finally got around to putting up my first real entry in the Dream Chaser Chronicles! It's been a surprisingly eventful start to the year so I've got a lot to squeeze into this post. I wasn't really expecting to have anything exciting happen for at least a couple of months, but the curves in life's road been keeping me hopping.
As you can tell from the photos I've recently been to Sydney. After having a wonderful Christmas and New Year, one of the first things that I wanted to do was to have a talk with Mrs Donaldson (who was my teacher before I went to New Zealand) about kick starting my dancing career. It was great to see her again. We had a good catch up on gossip and did some brain storming for this year's plan of action. She suggested that I attend the International Summer School that was in Sydney in a weeks time. The summer school is hosted by the McDonald College and has a faculty of international teachers who in addition to teaching the pupils, have conferences for local teachers. For me, it would be a good week of training that would get me in shape and I would also be able to make some good contacts. On the down side, it was rather late notice and was going to be a bit of a stretch financially.
As you can easily guess from the photos, I did decide to make the trip though it was not an easy decision to make. After a day of pondering it, I eventually realised that I had no real choice. If I was going to make this dancing thing happen I was going to have to push it as hard as I could. Get big or get out.
It was a difficult leap of faith for me to make that decision. I always knew that I wasn't going to make history as a ballet dancer, but my goal always was just to be able to make a profession out of it. After graduating from the New Zealand School of Dance I didn't really have the confidence that I had the talent or technique make it. Guts, discipline, work ethic and raw determination I can do, but I suffer from a lack of natural co-ordination and talent. I discussed it with Mrs Donaldson and she said that she thought I still had a realistic chance. So decided to look at this summer school as a trial by fire. The summer school's faculty had some pretty impressive names in it including some previous tutors, Paul Boyd and Sarah Roe. They would be able to give me a realistic, impartial judgement on whether I should give ballet the flick. It was time to make or break!
It actually turned out so much better than I could have even imagined. The first couple of days were rather painful as I got out all the holiday bugs. Once over that, I had a great time learning and performing everything from ballet to jazz to character. I had only signed up to do one week of the the two week course due to the dollars. The faculty loved my work so much that they offered me a scholarship to stay on for the second week. Talk about a confidence boost! They were all so positive about my work and said that I should definitely persist in a dancing career. So I stayed the second week and had just as much as the first. I even got to perform a short ballet solo at the end of the second week that I had learnt the previous afternoon! That was definitely a challenge but so much fun at the same time.
I'm now back in lovely Brisbane (Sorry, I didn't like Sydney much as a city) and preparing my next move. For classes I'm doing some ballet at Mrs. Donaldson's studio and seeing if I can get classes at Queensland Dance School of Excellence and QUT. A little bit further down the track I'm hoping to get classes at Queensland Ballet and Expressions Dance Theatre.
As far as auditions go, I'm going to the Tokyo Disneyland audition on Tuesday. Then Opera Queensland are looking for dancers for there production of La Traviata in April.
So that's my life up to date in the DreamChaser Chronicles. Feel free to post a comment and if you subscribe to the blog you will be able to receive the next batch of stories.
Thanks for reading ;-)
DreamChaser
As you can tell from the photos I've recently been to Sydney. After having a wonderful Christmas and New Year, one of the first things that I wanted to do was to have a talk with Mrs Donaldson (who was my teacher before I went to New Zealand) about kick starting my dancing career. It was great to see her again. We had a good catch up on gossip and did some brain storming for this year's plan of action. She suggested that I attend the International Summer School that was in Sydney in a weeks time. The summer school is hosted by the McDonald College and has a faculty of international teachers who in addition to teaching the pupils, have conferences for local teachers. For me, it would be a good week of training that would get me in shape and I would also be able to make some good contacts. On the down side, it was rather late notice and was going to be a bit of a stretch financially.
As you can easily guess from the photos, I did decide to make the trip though it was not an easy decision to make. After a day of pondering it, I eventually realised that I had no real choice. If I was going to make this dancing thing happen I was going to have to push it as hard as I could. Get big or get out.
It was a difficult leap of faith for me to make that decision. I always knew that I wasn't going to make history as a ballet dancer, but my goal always was just to be able to make a profession out of it. After graduating from the New Zealand School of Dance I didn't really have the confidence that I had the talent or technique make it. Guts, discipline, work ethic and raw determination I can do, but I suffer from a lack of natural co-ordination and talent. I discussed it with Mrs Donaldson and she said that she thought I still had a realistic chance. So decided to look at this summer school as a trial by fire. The summer school's faculty had some pretty impressive names in it including some previous tutors, Paul Boyd and Sarah Roe. They would be able to give me a realistic, impartial judgement on whether I should give ballet the flick. It was time to make or break!
It actually turned out so much better than I could have even imagined. The first couple of days were rather painful as I got out all the holiday bugs. Once over that, I had a great time learning and performing everything from ballet to jazz to character. I had only signed up to do one week of the the two week course due to the dollars. The faculty loved my work so much that they offered me a scholarship to stay on for the second week. Talk about a confidence boost! They were all so positive about my work and said that I should definitely persist in a dancing career. So I stayed the second week and had just as much as the first. I even got to perform a short ballet solo at the end of the second week that I had learnt the previous afternoon! That was definitely a challenge but so much fun at the same time.
I'm now back in lovely Brisbane (Sorry, I didn't like Sydney much as a city) and preparing my next move. For classes I'm doing some ballet at Mrs. Donaldson's studio and seeing if I can get classes at Queensland Dance School of Excellence and QUT. A little bit further down the track I'm hoping to get classes at Queensland Ballet and Expressions Dance Theatre.
As far as auditions go, I'm going to the Tokyo Disneyland audition on Tuesday. Then Opera Queensland are looking for dancers for there production of La Traviata in April.
So that's my life up to date in the DreamChaser Chronicles. Feel free to post a comment and if you subscribe to the blog you will be able to receive the next batch of stories.
Thanks for reading ;-)
DreamChaser
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