In the spotlight: Grace Davison

She began dancing at age four - but it was only this year that Grace Davison entered competition and seriously started to vie for a place in a prestigious overseas school to cater to her extraordinary style of ballet. MERLE FOSTER reports.
With her belated launch into the world of competition, 2010 has been the busiest year of 15-year-old Grace Davison's life - and recently the Athenree teenager scored the highest marks possible in five ballet exams. She received distinctions in her two Royal Academy of Dance exams, honours in her three British Ballet Organisation exams and is currently sitting Year 11 NCEA exams.
Grace joined Waihi Beach's School of Dance from age four to seven, then shifted to Waihi School of Dance under Carol Hayden.
She fulfilled her limits with Carol, and it was suggested she seek tutorship at the Dance Education School in Tauranga.
Tutor Pru Gooch, who also fostered development of Katikati's successful ballet dancer Ty King Wall, took Grace under her wing. "I really enjoy it. I've been passionate about it since I was little and that hasn't changed," says Grace. "Obviously when I was little it didn't have the meaning it does now - but it's all I've ever wanted to do."
As a child, "it was all about wearing pretty shoes, pink tutus and tiaras". She now realises "the gigantic workload involved".
At age five, Grace read a book on a ballet school that saw students do two lessons a week.
"I thought 'wow', but now I do more than two lessons daily."
Grace's mother Anne describes her daughter as a "very, very determined, stubborn and focused person".
Last year, Grace went on a British Ballet Organisation Concourse and realised that she really wanted to spend more time dancing. So she withdrew from Katikati College to study via the Correspondence School. "My father Ross helps me with science and maths while mum is good with history and arts."
An average week for her involves 30 hours of dancing, but this increases if she has a show or competitions.
"It's like a full-time job plus studying after hours," says Anne. Grace goes through a $130 pair of Bloch shoes every two weeks and a pair of Gaymor Mindens every 12 weeks.
Grace says the main challenge is time management. "It was a lot of early starts at 5am or earlier to get schoolwork done before practising ballet and then going to DEC classes in Tauranga." Grace also managed to play a role in Don Quixote which Ty King Wall was to star in before an injury stopped him.
But how does she have a normal teenage social life? She thinks her life is normal and wouldn't have it any other way.
As Anne says, "Everyone is close in ballet classes and she has three close friends she has known since she was little."
Grace is applying to English ballet schools for next year, which will suit her "very classical" style of dance, recording her moves on DVD. She's applying for overseas tuition as there are no local schools catering to her unique style.
"I'd love to go to the Royal Ballet School in Birmingham," she says. Her second choice is the English National Ballet School.
One benefit is her English citizenship and mum's family in England. And despite the cost involved, Anne is happy to make it happen for her daughter. "[If] this is what she really wants to do, then we have to do everything we can to facilitate it."
Once ballet school is decided upon, Grace hopes to take a path similar to Ty - "except mine will be in England".
Asked what she really loves about dancing, Grace says there are two aspects. "One bit is the feeling you get from dancing on stage when everyone is watching you, enjoying the performance and clapping," she says. "The other is when you've finally nailed your triple pirouette, after working on it for two months - it's an amazing feeling.
"And the sense that when I am dancing I'm so focused on being the dance moves, it absorbs me and it is how I express how I feel, it's my passion. I love it, without it life just wouldn't be the same."