Newly-promoted Australian Ballet principal artist Callum Linnane's journey to fulfill his ballet dreams

Today he's one of the premiere dancers in Australia, recently promoted to principal artist of the Australian Ballet and living the dream he imagined when he first set foot in to the Australian Ballet School as a 12-year-old boy.

The training and travel has been relentless but he can't imagine any other life as his role role promises to be another personal highlight in a long list of dreams he's been able to fulfil.

Linnane has just closed in the lead role of Anna Karenina in Melbourne, a role he will reprise in Sydney next month, but between seasons he is busy rehearsing the Nederlands Dans Theater's contemporary ballet Kunstkamer which opens in Sydney late April and in Melbourne in June.

It was the work of the Nederlands Dans Theater that changed his views on ballet and dance as a 16 year old and he's pinching himself that he now gets to work with the company's choreographers.

"When I saw that company perform when I was 16 it completely blew my mind and totally changed how I thought about dance because up until that point I was a real ballet nerd, wanting to do full length ballets like Swan Lake, The Nutcracker and play the prince roles.

"This was contemporary dance I had never seen before and watching that performance changed my life. When you are 15 years old, in the middle of ballet school, dance is your entire life and you don't really think of anything outside.

"Now I'm 26, I've had a great year, just been promoted to principal artist which is a huge dream come true and a few days later I'm in a studio with those choreographers who created the work I saw in that show when I was 16 and they are working on me and helping me change the way I dance and think about things. It's a crazy full circle."

It's also a testament to the dedication that saw Callum travel six days a week from Ballarat to Melbourne to train at the Australian Ballet School before he left home and moved to Melbourne when he was 15.

He had been taking ballet for only a couple of years before realising it was his passion and he wanted to study in Melbourne.

He was 11 when his dance teachers finally convinced him to try ballet.

"I had been taking pretty much every dance class except ballet. I had a severe love of dance and never wanted to admit it probably out of fear of being bullied or being different," he said.

"Ballet seemed ultra-feminine and at that age, at primary school, there was such a fear of people finding out. It's enough doing dance, but then to do ballet it seemed it would be all too much ... but I knew I wanted to dance in terms of an actual career goal."

His teachers "sold" ballet to him as a way to help every other dance style.

"I reluctantly agreed to ballet and for the first year it was me and another boy and it was once a week - ballet 101 nothing too strenuous. The second year I did it, my final year of primary school, I started doing more ballet in the grade system with ballet exams.

"I fell completely in love with it and then was so driven and determined and wanted to go forward."

At 12 he told his mum he wanted to go to Melbourne and join a full-time ballet school.

"Initially I planned to audition for Victorian College of the Arts Secondary School because there I could still do all the other subjects but my teacher said why don't we do an audition for the Australian Ballet School and use that as a preparation audition for VCAS because I had never done an audition before.

"I did the audition at the Australian Ballet School and as soon as I walked in the door I had a feeling this was the place - I loved the studio, loved the atmosphere."

He was accepted in to both schools and chose the Australian Ballet School.

For his first year he went to school in the morning at St Patrick's College and left at lunchtime to catch the train to Melbourne for an afternoon of ballet.

"Someone would pick me up from school - mum, dad, my nan, uncle or aunt and take me to the station to get on the train to go to Melbourne, I'd get to the ballet school, warm up and start class there around 4pm until 7.30pm."

For the first year a family member would catch the train to Melbourne to come home with him on the train after ballet finished.

After that he got a place in the full time program in Melbourne where ballet classes started at 8.30am, academic studies were done in the afternoon with more ballet after.

"I'd be up at 5am or 5.30am and on the 6.25am train to get to Melbourne just after 7.30am, I'd get to ballet school just before 8am and warm up ready to start class. I did that for another year and a half to two years."

At that time, when he was 15, his aunt Claire, also from Ballarat, started work in Melbourne and they rented an apartment together.

"We were room mates so I effectively moved away from home when I was 15, living in an apartment in Melbourne, usually with my aunt there and sometimes not so I grew up pretty quickly.

"There was never a question in my head not about wanting to leave home, home was great, but it was whatever was going to help me reach my goal, achieve my dream."

As he hit his senior years of secondary school, the balance of ballet and academics swung more to ballet and dance subjects.

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"You start doing more performance in that last year, you go on tour and are vying for a position in the company.

"I was scheduled to graduate in 2013 and then I injured my knee in that year. It was a pretty standard injury but it kept me out for six months or so. Getting to the end of the year my teacher suggested I do another year, which I wasn't keen on as I'd been there six years and felt I needed to get out even if I didn't get a job there, I felt I needed to go join a company in Europe or try something new.

"Luckily they talked some sense in to me. I ended up repeating that final year of ballet school which was the best possible thing for me. I was physically fit, already had a good relationship with my teachers and then I got an offer to join the company at the beginning of 2015."

"I've grown up in this place, in these halls since I was a 12-year-old. It's been more than half my life."

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