NEWS

On August 19 20 10 The Ballarat Arts Foundation awarded the Inaugural Craig Revel Horwood Award for Choreography and Contemporary Dance to JARRED PIOR a 20-year-old ballet dancer who left Australia last week to take up a scholarship at the Gelsey Kirkland Academy of Classical Ballet in New York . The Award was to help with living Expenses He will be living with other ballet students in accommodation supported by the Joffre School of Ballet, in Greenwich Village.

A highly articulate and focussed young man, he will be a great ambassador for Australia. He was chosen as one of only 20 international students in the senior class of the Academy, and was also invited to teacher select junior dancers aged between 10 and 13.

JARRED PIOR began dancing 6 years ago, when his family moved from Sydney to Ballarat. After early training in jazz and ballet with the Carole Oliver School of Ballet in Ballarat, he began training under Nina Osypyan, a former principal dancer and ballet mistress of the Moscow State Ballarat, the Royal New Zealand Ballet and master teacher of the Australian Ballet School .

In 2007, Jarred received - through BAF - the Ballarat Lyric Theatre Award to represent Australia in international Cecchetti competitions in Calgary , Canada . Among other awards, he was recognised with The Victorian Theatre Guild Award for Best Dancer as Mr. Mistoffolees in Lyric's production of ‘Cats'.

The Kirkland Academy is committed to developing classical dancers “ who are capable of expressing powerful theatrical ideas …through a rich understanding of other artistic disciplines, cultures and traditions”. The course includes historic and character dance, body conditioning, partnering, music, acting, mime, literature, history, critical analysis, anatomy, stagecraft, painting and sculpture and, most important of all from the point of view of the Award, contemporary movement.