Two young dancers are the lucky recipients of handsome awards administered by the Australia Council.
Noah Benzie Drayton (17) has received a $50,000 Marten Bequest scholarship.
Noah has collected quite a list of achievements since he started studying classical ballet at the age of four in his home-town of Perth. Whilst training at the Perth School of Ballet he was a finalist in the 2017 Alana Haines Australasian Awards; the 2017 Cecchetti International Classical Ballet Competition; and the 2018 Youth America Grand Prix. He also passed his Advanced 2 Cecchetti examination with Honours. He won the Evelyn Hodgkinson Scholarship at the annual Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) Festival, and was the Junior Male Dancer of the Festival from 2014-18. He was also a finalist in last year’s Prix de Lausanne.
He has received offers to join a number of prestigious international schools, but finally chose the Paris Opera Ballet School, which he joined in September last year.
His Marten Bequest scholarship is one of 12 awarded to promising artists across a range of genres. The scholarships are awarded every two years towards travel and study. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the time frame will be extended an extra year.
Lincoln Sharp has been awarded the biennial 2020 Lady Mollie Askin Ballet Scholarship of $30,000. Lincoln is also 17, and started dancing at the age of ten. He attended Newtown High School of the Performing Arts and the Tanya Pearson Academy in Sydney, where he has been training full-time since the age of sixteen. In 2018 he was accepted into the Royal Ballet Spring Intensive School held in Hong Kong and he won the RAD Martin Rubinstein Award for Male Dancer at the Isobel Anderson Awards (NSW).
He took up short-term scholarships with English National Ballet School and Dutch National Ballet Academy in 2019. He has also been accepted into English National Ballet School and Dutch National Ballet Academy Summer Schools in 2019.
Congratulations to both!
Noah Benzie Drayton is pictured top. Photo: Charlotte Fenn
