For a family of rugby players and surfers Huw Pritchard’s desire to learn ballet at the age of 13 came as a surprise.
Huw, now, 18, also played rugby and patrolled as a lifesaver at Noosa Heads like his mother, Kylie, and his older brothers.
But when he watched his sister’s dance concert he was quite taken by it and decided he’d like to do some dance.
Huw started with Hip Hop and with a group entered the Sunshine Coast Festival of Dance which attracts about 100 schools.
“We didn’t really know what we were doing,” Huw said, but after the first round they were called back for a second one. Having noticed a very large trophy they were surprised when at the end of the event it was awarded to them.
After the festival Huw said he’d like to try ballet.
His younger sister, Piper, who was about eight at the time was taking lessons at the Noosa Professional Dance Academy (NPDA).
The family spoke to NPDA principal Michelle Buckley who suggested Huw join in his sister’s class.
He towered over the young girls. “I came out of it and went no I won’t be doing that again,” he said.
But another student, Reuben, who was Huw’ s age, suggested he join his class, and see what happened.
“They were teenagers and had all been dancing since they were about six,” Kylie said. “It was sink or swim. He didn’t know the technical terms, how to use his muscles. The language was all French. He didn’t know any of it.”
But Reuben, who is now at the Elmshurst Ballet School in Birmingham, helped Huw learn and was pleased to have another boy in the class.
“He’d stand in the back of the class with me and teach me stuff,” Huw said. “For the first year I was looking at Reuben’s feet to see what to do.”
By then there were four boys in the class and it was decided to hold an all boys class.
They learnt Cossack dance which proved to be “awesome” and built up their strength, and they worked on their technique.
At the NPDA annual concert, academy teacher Karen Donovan, who has danced with companies around the world including the Royal Ballet School in London, saw Huw dance and asked why he was not in the full time program.
“We didn’t agree with it,” Kylie said. “We thought it was pie in the sky stuff. We wanted him to stay at school.”
Kylie wanted some advice and phoned an old friend, Trevor Green, who started dancing with the Queensland Ballet Company at 15 and has performed and choreographed across the world.
“As it turned out Trevor Green was good friends with Karen. We had a long chat and Karen said what if he stays at school and comes and does my classes two days a week,” Kylie said. Huw gained permission from his school, St Teresa’s Catholic College, and 12 months on his dancing had progressed to “another level altogether”.
At the next concert freelance ballet teacher Wim Broeckx saw Huw dance and told him, “now it’s time to dance with me”.
“I’d love to but my mum wouldn’t,” Huw told him.
The Belgian-born Wim rose to principal dancer with the Dutch National Ballet before becoming artistic president of the Prix de Lausanne International Ballet Competition. He moved to the Gold Coast in 2012 and now works at various professional dance companies including NPDA.
“Wim tapped me on the shoulder,” Kylie said. “I had to have another meeting with the school. We said (to Huw) if your school work suffers it’ll have to stop. Last year he was dancing about 18-19 hours a week. We went from saying all that matters is your education to all that matters is dance.”
Huw decided last year in Year 12 he wanted to make dance his future.
“We talked a lot with Karen, asking what we should do, how do we approach this,” Kylie said.
They started making lists of where to audition and Huw started auditioning. Sydney didn’t go too good. “He was so disheartened,” Kylie said. “But he soon realised what he didn’t know.”
Then Huw gained an offer for 2019 with the Australian Conservatoire of Ballet in Victoria.
“That was the first – then he knew he could do this. It raised his confidence no end.”
He auditioned for Queensland Ballet and that failed.
Then the New Zealand School of Dance attached to the New Zealand Royal Ballet offered him a place.
“I was in class watching YouTube when I got an email from the New Zealand School of Dance,” Huw said. “I opened it – it said congratulations on your place. I nearly put my hand through my Mac.”
Then Huw received another offer from the Tanya Pearson Classical Coaching Academy in Sydney.
“We sat down with Wim and Karen,” Kylie said. “They said if he truly wants to be a ballet dancer he needs to be at a school attached to a company.”
New Zealand had that and quite a reputation for looking after their students and it’s known to be a destination for directors looking for dancers.
It means going to live at the school in Wellington, something Huw predicts will be “quite wonderful” though he will miss Noosa.
Kylie wonders how with one brother in motorsports and another a stockbroker Huw became so driven to dance.
“He’s so passionate about it,” Kylie said.
“I find him eating weetbix and watching ballet on his iphone,” she said. “You can hear the music.”
Huw has been working at his parent’s business, PC Used Cars and Mechanical, in Noosaville to help save for his ballet expenses and will leave next week for New Zealand.
His aim for the future is to be principal dancer at a company in Europe but for now “to be the best I can be and see how it works out”.
“It’s up to him to keep it going and he will,” Kylie said. “I don’t have any doubts.”
