On the road

Amy Johnson, a final-year student with The Australian Ballet School, blogs from the road as she tours regional Australia with The Dancers Company.

It is a Sunday afternoon and I have just enjoyed a relaxed stroll through the gardens, a fitting start to a lazy few days. As a dancer, the ‘nothing days’ rarely present themselves so when they do,  we take full advantage to rest battered bodies. This weekend me and the other members of The Dancers Company are certainly going to enjoy the rarity, and understandably so. Over the past two weeks The Dancers Company has performed in nine shows across four Victorian locations – Ballarat, Frankston, Sale and Geelong.

In each of these regions a fairly routine timetable was established – a class each morning to ensure technique is maintained and improved on, notes on the previous night’s performance, a two to three-hour rehearsal, a dinner break, and finally a warm-up barre before the performance. Although such a schedule is demanding and tiring, the adrenalin and buzz that we get from performing together makes all the hard work worthwhile.

So while we enjoy our two days off, sleeping in our own beds, catching up with family and completing many loads of washing, our excitement for the next leg of the tour which takes us all the way to sunny Queensland is never far from our minds.

The Dancers Company tour continues to Rockhampton, Cairns, Alice Springs and Darwin

Image: Tamara Freeman with artists of The Dancers Company in Nutcracker, the Gift of a Dream Act 2. Photography Jessica Bialek