Taking a leap into the world of dance

The energy radiating from the girls sitting in a semi-circle in the rehearsal room of Corrib Dance Academy in the city’s Briarhill Business Park could power the national grid.

The young ballet dancers from Galway are graceful and talented – and determined to make a career in the tough world of professional dancing.

Stephanie Dufresne, Mary Walsh, Rebecca Lee, Caitlin Langan, Brigitte O’Reilly, Gemma Brook, Jessica Nolan and Elspeth McKeever are all members of Youth Ballet West, (YBW) which was set up in 2007 to create a semi-professional Youth Ballet Company in the West of Ireland and to raise the profile of ballet locally. The company currently has 25 dancers.

YBW was born out of a frustration at the lack of training for dancers in the West and was the brainchild of sisters, Judith Sibley and Phyllis Hayes who had previously set up the Corrib Dance Academy.

Youth Ballet West would give the girls training and a platform, while allowing them to continue attending secondary school locally. The company would also be a springboard for the most talented, helping them to get places at dance schools in the UK and Europe, as there are no dedicated dance courses at third level in Ireland.

The talent is here in the West, says Judith, it’s a question of offering people opportunities.

That is exactly what has happened with these eight girls. Stephanie Dufresne is in her final year of a BA in Dance at Rotterdam Royal Academy in the Netherlands while Mary Walsh will complete a BA in Ballet Education in London’s Royal Academy of Dance next year.

This year Rebecca was offered, and accepted, a place in the Royal Scottish Academy, doing Modern Ballet and Caitlin is going to the London Studio Centre, while Elspeth McKeever is on her way to the Northern Contemporary Dance School.

Gemma Brook has been offered fulltime training places, both by the London Studio Centre, Millennium Performing Arts College and Bird College of Performing Arts. Jessica has also been offered a full-time place at Bird College while Brigitte O’ Reilly was offered a full-time place by Ballet West in Scotland. But they have deferred for the moment, either for funding reasons, or because they are still at school.

“Doing something athletic and physical with your body is fantastic,” says Stephanie Dufresne, who at 21 is the oldest of the girls. Stephanie was 14 when she started ballet, which was late – all the others were five or six. She had previously done ballet in France when she was four, but it wasn’t what she expected so she quit and did sports acrobatics.

Later, after teaming up with an acrobatic partner who was also a dancer, she began to think “it was cool” and did hip-hop first and then ballet.

She admits she “went a bit mad” playing catch up with her fellow dancers, but she had to. “I was competing against people who started at six.”

Because she had trained in gymnastics, she was fit and flexible, but ballet required a different type of skill which she had to learn.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.