Voting is now open for the 2023 Telstra Ballet Dancer Awards. This year Telstra and the Australian Ballet celebrate the 20th anniversary of these awards, and the 39th anniversary of Telstra’s partnership with the Australian Ballet.
The Telstra Ballet Dancer Awards incorporates two separate awards: The Telstra Rising Star Award, which includes a $25,000 prize for the winner; The Telstra People’s Choice Award, which includes a $15,000 prize for the winner. Winners of the awards will be announced at Sydney Opera House on 20 May 2023, following The Australian Ballet’s closing performance of George Balanchine’s Jewels. The winners will be chosen by a panel of judges from The Australian Ballet and Telstra and the general public.
The five dancers nominated for the 2023 Telstra Ballet Dancer Awards include: Adam Elmes - Corps de Ballet Dancer, Isobelle Dashwood - Soloist, Lilla Harvey - Corps de Ballet Dancer, Riley Lapham - Coryphée and Katherine Sonnekus - Coryphée.
The nominees were selected by The Australian Ballet’s Artistic team, the company’s Principal artists, and past Telstra Ballet Dancer Award winners. A nomination is a huge honour for these dancers as it recognises their hard work and potential as determined by their peers.
The Telstra Ballet Dancer Awards are one of the longest running arts awards in the country and being nominated helps dancers build their confidence in their skills and abilities as they work to ascend the ranks in Australia’s national ballet company. Proof of their success in identifying and rewarding talented dancers is the fact that as many as eleven former winners have gone on to become Principal Artists with the Australian Ballet.
Sydney audiences may be able to catch live performances of these nominees in the Australian Ballet’s current Sydney Opera House season of Don Quixote and the upcoming seasons of Identity and Jewels. For everyone else the nominees in the 2023 Telstra Ballet Dancer Awards are featured in a series of videos, which encourage the public to vote for their favourite dancer.
To vote in the TBDA People’s Choice Awards, visit www.telstra.com/ballet or via 0484 BALLET.