In the past year Daisy Rogers has tap danced her way from Ballarat all the way to Mexico.
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A year ago she received a Ballarat Arts Foundation scholarship which enabled her to attend the Australian Tap Dance Festival in Melbourne.
Through a series of master classes and residencies with professional tap dancers from Australia and overseas, she built a network that resulted in an invitation to audition for the Australian International Tap Dance Team which will compete in the The World Dance Challenge in Mexico in July.
Last week she found out she successfully made the team - and yesterday she shared the good news with international tap dancer and British Dancing with the Stars judge Craig Revel Horwood, who was born in Ballarat and donated the funds for the scholarship that she received last year.
"The Australian Tap Dance Festival is one of the few opportunities for young tap dancers in the state and one of the biggest opportunities to work with elite tap dancers and coaches from Australia and overseas," Daisy said.
"It went for a week. The first two days were master classes and I took four master classes with professional tap dancers then two five-day residences where you work in class with one teacher and a performance at the end."
Daisy started ballet when she was two, and when she was nine her dance studio opened a tap class which she decided to take because her sister was already doing contemporary dance.
"I really just enjoyed the difficulty of it, and I stuck with it and found I really loved it."
She does about five hours a week of tap dancing and eight hours of dance in total outside of school, but she is also taking VCE Dance as a subject at school so notches up about 11 hours a week of dancing. That's before she spends all day Sunday training with a group of elite teenage tap dancers in Melbourne.
Mr Horwood said he was thrilled to be able to support Ballarat's emerging artists through his scholarship with the Ballarat Arts Foundation.
"What a pleasure to be able to meet Daisy as she takes to the stage to represent Australia with her dancing," he said.
Mr Horwood has supported the foundation through his named award - the Craig Revel Horwood award for Contemporary Dance and Choreography - since 2010.
"BAF are so thankful for the ongoing support of donors like Craig, many of whom are artists themselves and understand only too well the challenges that may be encountered in developing a career in the arts," said BAF spokeswoman Paula Nicholson.
Ballarat Arts Foundation grant applications will be open from June 1 to July 10 with details at ballaratartsfoundation.org.au.
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