South West Rocks raised Bryce Latham starts work at the Australian Ballet Company

Awaiting Bryce in the big city was The Australian Ballet School and five years of hard work.

"It was amazing, a great learning experience for myself because I was so young when I went so I basically grew up in Melbourne and thrived in the dance world there because everyone around me was like-minded and wanted to pursue a career in dance," he said.

Finishing at the school in 2021, Bryce graduated with a Diploma of Classical Ballet and Advanced Diploma of Dance (Elite Performance).

After auditioning for the Queensland Ballet and Australian Ballet, Bryce had a choice to make after he was accepted by both companies.

He chose the latter with his career at the company starting two Mondays ago with almost a full weeks work involved.

"I'm a professional dancer that does six days a week of training rehearsals, practicing for upcoming productions and seasons, touring around Australia and includes international travels," Bryce explained.

"Now that I'm in the company we have programs for health and conditioning where people help curate a program that goes for five to six days that involves conditioning the body, muscles, recovery and strength training.

"You work on this with your gym teacher for five to six days a week."

"Basically I'm paid to dance with one of the top five ranked ballet companies around the world so it has a high level of standard in dancing."

At the company Bryce will start as a Corps de ballet before hoping to go through the ranks which includes; Coryphees, Soloists, Senior Artist and Principal Artist.

"Hopefully over a 10-year period you progress through those levels," he said.

"It takes a very long time to get to Principal Artist and of course that's my dream."

For Bryce's mother Katrina, the move to Melbourne was worth it when she can see how hard her son works.

"Bryce was raised in South West Rocks before we moved so that is a massive sea change and a big change for the whole family to come to the city," she said.

"We had to make a lot of sacrifices to do that but we knew with Bryce he was not only incredibly talented but totally dedicated.

"They do so many outside classes in their ballet and he never needed pushing, he had this determination and fire in his belly that we knew he'd make it.

"It was definitely worth the risk to pack up everything and move to Melbourne."

And the move couldn't have been possible without support from his original teacher, Miss Danae, from Danae Cantwell School of Dance in Kempsey.

"When I first started dance I wasn't too crash hot on ballet but Miss Danae saw something in me and pushed me to audition for The Australian Ballet School," Bryce recalled.

"It really motivated me that someone saw something in me with my potential for ballet which was really exciting.

"She was really influential in making me do this."

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