Ballerina pirouettes to Melbourne

Warkworth ballerina Brooke McMahon is making her mark as one of New Zealand’s most promising dancers.

The 11-year-old, who is in Year 7 at Mahurangi College, has won a place in the Australian Ballet School International Training Programme (ITP).

Entry to the coveted programme is by audition, with hundreds of dancers from around Australia and overseas auditioning every year.

Brooke has been dancing under the guidance of Carla Talbot, at the Talbot Dance Academy in Warkworth, since she was three years old.

Talbot says the ITP programme will give Brooke much wider exposure so is an important step in her career as a dancer.

“It is an outstanding achievement for a local dancer and, as far as I know, she may be the first dancer in Warkworth to have achieved this,” Talbot says.

“It recognises her hard work, focus and dedication.” by Ken Leech presents

The ITP means Brooke will fly to Melbourne two or three times a year for specialist training at the Australian Ballet School.

This will sit alongside her position in the elite New Zealand School of Dance Scholars Programme, based in Wellington. Hundreds of dancers audition every year for a only a handful of places on the programme.

Meanwhile, McMahon has been dancing up a storm at competitions up and down the country.

She made the quarter finals (junior) of the biennial Alana Haines Australasian Awards in Wellington over Easter, where she competed against more than 140 other dancers in her group.

Just prior to Easter, she won the Junior Variation Award and the 10&U12 Scholarship (overall highest points) and was runner-up in the intermediate ballet championships at the Waihi Performing Arts Competition, the 10&U12 Scholarship (overall highest points) at Bays School of Dance Competition and was a finalist in the Ballet Academy Awards in her section in February.

She is also part of the Ballet Academy Auckland Elite Programme and the Dance Masters International Intensive Training Programme, and has just completed the Auckland Academy Vocational Exam Seminar and was awarded the Excellence Award for the intermediate foundation group.