09 - Ben Davis, Soloist - Australian Ballet

Ben Davis is a soloist with The Australian Ballet. His interview is light hearted, fun-loving and filled with good humor. At the same time Ben is humble and appreciative of living a life of ballet and working at the Sydney Opera House. Generous with his talents, he often guest teaches with various programs throughout Australia, motivating students to be their best. He expands upon his onstage artistic creativity by also working as a freelance professional make-up artist. Born in Melbourne in 1982, Ben Davis used to tag along to his sister's jazz ballet classes and copy the routines from the back of the studio before he started attending his own classes at age seven. In May of 2010, he good humoredly admits,I didn't really like ballet at first: I just saw a bunch of girls standing around, not doing much and listening to some kind of clunky music. I liked musical theatre, but I found out I couldn't sing, so that got shot out of the way. Ben trained with Leeanne Rutherford of Ballet Theatre Australia. He was 18 before he really decided that a career in ballet was a possibility. In another interview, Ben tells us "My teacher used to call me flash in the pan boy, totally gung-ho one minute and not so much the next. Then at 20 I really knuckled down and crammed as much training as humanly possible into the following two years."