REGIONAL HEROES: From Dust Creative Arts

Red dust, 35 degree days, driving four to five hours and, when necessary, camping by creeks, waterholes and within school grounds to be able to teach the next morning. It doesn’t sound like the ideal creative environment for a dance school, but for Brie Healy, founder of From Dust Creative Arts in Tom Price, WA, these are the lengths she is prepared to go to the share the joy of dance.

Healy officially started her venture in 2017 in Tom Price, a small mining town in the Pilbara region with a population of just over 3000 people. Over the last five years the school has grown to 160 students enrolled from Tom Price and neighbouring town Paraburdoo (an hour down the road). The school offers studio dance classes in tap, jazz, hip hop, acrobatics, ballet, contemporary and aerials as well as pop up classes in locations such as Exmouth, Onslow and Carnarvon. It also offers short-term schools programs in indigenous communities and regional towns.

Healy grew up in Melbourne and started dance training at the age of three, studying CSTD up to the Student Teacher’s exam. She completed a Certificate III in Dance during her VCE studies and then a Bachelor of Arts (Dance) as well as certifications in Progressing Ballet Technique, Acrobatic and Aerial Arts. She is now studying for her Masters of Education (Dance) through the Royal Academy of Dance. She says that in Melbourne she was “surrounded by opportunity, no matter what road I chose to head down”. For someone who grew up with the arts playing a major role in her life, “as an outlet, as a point of expression and as a leisure activity”, she has dedicated her career to bringing the same joy to others.

After graduating she travelled throughout Australia and discovered that there was no arts centre in the Pilbara region (two have since been established) and that, of the 30 schools in the broader geographical area, only two schools had arts programs. She was also surprised to discover how many children lived in these mining towns and communities. Thus From Dust Creative Arts was born.

Total dedication to her job sees Healy travel up to 1500km in a week to deliver her dance classes. A typical week might see her leave home on Sunday afternoon and drive for five hours, towing her trailer with acro mats, dance flooring, equipment and props to her teaching location, arriving at night and camping for the night, before teaching on Monday morning at one location. Then she would drive “just down the road – three hours away” and stay overnight at the next location to set up and teach on Tuesday morning before driving home in the afternoon to be back in town for the rest of the week’s studio classes.

The past two years have been particularly challenging, with Covid-19 causing an exodus of dance teachers in regional towns such as Exmouth, Halls Creek and Carnarvon.

The school partners with the Shire for community events, festivals and parades. Healy’s adult jazz dancers will be presenting Tom Price’s first ever cabaret and will also be performing at the Paraburdoo Red Rocks Ball in the coming months.   

One of Healy’s dreams is to have long term employees who could help her reach centres towards the coast (570km away). Another dream, and part of her brief as the Chair of Tom Price’s Arts and Cultural Centre (which operates from a scout hall) is to build or play a part in establishing some arts infrastructure in the area. She explains that there are no theatres in any of the towns that she visits. “I have tried to explain to my students what wings in a theatre are, but it’s hard to grasp if you’ve not seen them,” she says.

For Healy, joy comes from seeing the social impact of the students’ engagement with the arts as well as watching them overcoming challenges and achieve new skills. She is proud to have been given the trust of the Indigenous community to learn and use cultural or Dreamtime stories. The Elders share the story with students while Healy guides them to reimagine the story through dance. She explains: “not only do the students learn a new way to embody the story, but I have learned so much [about something] that I would not usually be exposed to.”

– MICHELLE DURSUN

The Regional Heroes series is proudly sponsored by ONEMUSIC AUSTRALIA, the national music licencing body.