Daisy Griffiths and Ballet Victoria demi-soloist Felix Milewski during final rehearsals before performing Sleeping Beauty.
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For Echuca’s Daisy Griffiths, all her world is fast becoming a stage.
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The almost 16-year-old dancer has a way to go before she is a prima ballerina, but right now, she is still on a high after dancing her first principal role with the State Youth Ballet.
Daisy has danced a number of solos, in Cinderella, The Nutcracker and The Magic Toyshop but her breakthrough performance came in the full-length production of Sleeping Beauty at the Bunjil Place Theatre, in the Melbourne suburb of Narre Warren.
Incredibly, she found herself calmer and more relaxed going into the biggest moment of her nascent career than she has done for previous performances.
“My first production with them was 2023 and since then I have been teaching myself how to get rid of my nerves,’’ she said.
‘’And really, if you do make a small mistake, even when you are centre stage, well, it’s not the end of your life.
“What was really different in Sleeping Beauty is it was my first partner dance, my first duo, and that was something new to deal with.”
Although the ballet was for dancers aged eight to 19, Ballet Victoria demi-soloist Felix Milewski was drafted into the production because of the number of lifts required.
And while ballet may be the most sublime of dance, it is also the most demanding of disciplines.
Which means, at times, Daisy can be doing 10 hours of training (not including warm-up and warm-down) with the youth ballet a week and, at home, across her involvement with ballet, jazz and tap, another 20 hours a week.
Starting out as a three-year-old with iDance, Daisy has this year shifted to Suzanne’s School of Ballet.
“Without Jacqui Kornmann at iDance I would not be where I am today, she has been such a big influence on my dancing, and been there every step of the way,” Daisy said.
Echuca’s Daisy Griffiths on the stage at the Bunjil Place Theatre.
“More importantly, she also pushed me to always try new things, to do better, and I owe her a lot for that.
“Working with Iona Marques (the State Youth Ballet associate artistic director) as choreographer of Sleeping Beauty, and also Jasmin Johnson, has been fantastic.”
The St Joseph’s College Year 10 student was quietly confident about her performance in Sleeping Beauty.
“It went very well, I think, and I was proud of my performance,” she said.
Her mother, Helen, watching from the seats, said “she smashed it”.
“Her teachers for the performance couldn’t gush enough about how it all went, she did such a good job,” she said.
Now Daisy has to decide on the next steps — the youth ballet will be staging a ‘minor’ performance later this year for which she could audition, but things are also getting a little busier at school.
She is “really enjoying” school this year, especially being able to choose most of her own subjects.
The audition and rehearsal process for Sleeping Beauty meant a lot of up and down to Melbourne, and Daisy is becoming a dab hand at doing her stage make-up and hair — although the hair sometimes seems to have a mind of its own.
And when she’s not dancing, rehearsing, practising, travelling, studying or sleeping, Daisy is also something of an enthusiastic baker — of anything.
All in all, it’s an incredibly relentless life recipe for one so young, but so far Daisy is loving making every post, and pirouette, a winner.
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