Year 7 Byron High students Kiahn Ladkin and Hunter Mains. Photo Tree Faerie.
Eve Jeffery
Two local schoolgirls have been offered a very important stepping stone in their dance careers and will join a cast of over two thousand dancers this weekend at the annual Schools Spectacular in Sydney.
Year 7 Byron High students Kiahn Ladkin and Hunter Mains will dance with the national award winning and internationally acclaimed Indigenous dance company Bangarra Dance Theatre.
The girls joined the junior troupe as part of Rekindling, a project aimed at developing the dance skills and cultural awareness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students in the style of contemporary Indigenous dance.
Rekindling participants research and gather stories with guidance from Elders within their communities, developing skills to produce thought provoking performances and community events.
Kiahn and Hunter are besties who just love dance and have taken classes together with Kate Histon at Dance Dynamics in Byron Bay since they were tiny people. The girls, who are both 12, travelled to Kingscliff earlier in the year to audition with Rekindling and were both selected to join the company to participate in the 2016 Schools Spectacular production Dream Big.
Both proudly represent their culture and are from mobs north of Sydney – Kiahn is Awabakal and Hunter is Wuradjeri.
The girls are having a blast. They travelled to Sydney three weeks ago to rehearse full-time in the Bangarra studio, and this week they have another six days of rehearsal and four performances this weekend.
There will be two shows daily on Friday and Saturday and the Spectacular will be aired 7pm this Saturday night, December 3, on Prime7.
