“I LOVE Queanbeyan,” 14-year-old Jordan Dwight tells “CityNews”… “I’ve even got the T-shirt that says so.”
Yes, he’s soon going to miss home, but Dwight, who’s been dancing with Canberra choreographer and teacher Amy Fitzpatrick since he was 7, is up, up and away, with an invitation to take up a full-time place at the Australian Ballet School in 2012.
This is the beginning of a big career for the young Karabah High School student, the only boy to be accepted from the Canberra area this year and it’s no accident. Dwight has been doing dance classes up to six days a week.
“I’ve always enjoyed ballet – I love doing it,” he told “CityNews”. For the past four years he’s been flying interstate to train with the ballet school, hoping that he might be selected for a full-time place.
“Now all the planets are lined up,” says Fitzpatrick, Principal of Dance City Performing Arts Centre in Hume, who says that in Dwight’s case the planets are his talent, his physique and his hard-working mum, who worked extra hours to pay for his dance classes.
It’s a curiously disciplined life for a 14-year-old. Dwight likes to hang out with his friends, but doesn’t have much time to do that, so enjoys listening to Lady Gaga in spare moments. His 12-year-old sister dances too and is especially proud of him, but then again so is his 18-year-old brother, who isn’t the slightest bit interested in dance.
Right now, he’s preparing for the showcase Australian National Dance Championships at Jupiter’s Casino on the Gold Coast, but there’s been a lot of organising so that he can get away to Melbourne too.
“I’m the youngest full-time student living away from my family, so a host family has been hand-picked.”
It’s been a good year for Fitzpatrick. She has three students going on to tertiary study at the Australian Institute of Music and the Village Performing Arts Centre, both in Sydney. While she focuses on teaching classical and tap, her school covers a wide range of disciplines, with a strong focus on musical theatre, comedic skills and characterisation. She and Dwight both well aware that the Australian Ballet School probably knock a certain amount of that out, in time-honoured classical dance school session.
Dwight is fit, strong and undaunted. “I don’t feel scared – I probably won’t until I get on the plane,” he says.
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