Meet Troy Schrieber, a young man whose dream it is to travel the world sharing traditional stories through dance.
The 18 year old has been dancing with The Australian Ballet for at least four years thanks to an ongoing partnership with his Cairns-based dance company, Miriki Performing Arts.
The collaboration has recently brought a new spin to Troy's dancing journey.
"I'm doing the Indigenous cadetship with The Australian Ballet and I have been freestyle dancing since I was two," he said.
The cadetship program was launched in 2020 but paused during 2021 due to the global pandemic.
Australian Ballet acting head of Education and Outreach Jasmin Dwyer said the program was for First Nations people who were performing arts students or had recently graduated.
"This year the cadets are working with us for 20-weeks within The Australian Ballet Education and Outreach Team, taking part in several touring and Melbourne-based training, performing and teaching activities," she said.
Ms Dwyer said Troy, who was one of two cadets this year, showed great talent and commitment to dance.
"He also shared our passion for sharing this love of dance with young people and the wider community," she said.
'Never in my life'
Troy has been working on freestyle dancing at his dance company, where there is a strong focus on fusing Indigenous stories, dance and culture with contemporary choreography.
He says he loves dancing because "you can show off your moves and your styles".
Ballet, however, was a style Troy had never planned to pursue because he thought it was just for girls.
"Never in my life I would've thought I would do ballet," he said.
"It's just something that came out of the blue."
Troy has been impressed by the male ballet dancers and has learnt technique and increased his strength.
"They were really strong, jumping up high and I thought, 'Oh, cool. I want to do that'," he said.
Part of his cadetship was to travel with the program to Yipirinya School — an Alice Springs school for First Nations children that promotes a philosophy of two-way learning between western and Indigenous cultures.
He said he wanted to inspire the students and give them hope by seeing a First Nations cadet with The Australian Ballet.
"If they want to do dance and pursue it, it is possible," Troy said.
He also has dreams of travelling the world.
"I just love sharing stories," Troy said.
"If we had a traditional story … you can fuse that into your contemporary piece and then share it with the audience."
Removing ballet barriers
Yipirinya School principal Gavin Morris said it was very important that students were exposed to the high level of ballet.
"It's that sort of excellence that we strive to achieve for our kids and that's what they deserve," he said.
"I'm sure that there are some fantastic ballet dancers at our school."
He added that he could help remove some of the barriers that the children faced if they wanted to pursue ballet.
"If the kids show the discipline and the resilience and the capacity to want to go on and do this … it's my job then to ensure that those barriers are addressed," Mr Morris said.
But he added it could be challenging to ensure that training was ongoing.
"It's important that we don't have people coming in and out, sort of parachuting into the school," Mr Morris said.
"We'll be working with the group to ensure that the programs are left so we can continue the training and then also ensure that we've got the resources, human and financial and otherwise, to ensure that if these kids want to go on, they can."
Revealing a new world
Australia Ballet senior dance educator Chantelle Van der Hoek said it was fundamental to travel to remote locations such as Alice Springs where students might not have been exposed to ballet before.
"This style of dance is something they might have seen on YouTube," she said.
"Coming in and having them be able to touch the tutus, to see the pointed shoes, and then to do the movements themselves and learn about storytelling through dance."
