When I meet Ty King-Wall for this interview, he’s tired.
But it’s not because he’s been dancing all night, as you might expect. It’s because he was up till five in the morning completing an essay.
At 26, this young man has worked his way to the top of the Australian Ballet while at the same time studying for a university degree. It appears he is not just a beautiful dancer, but a smart one too.
Not at all, he protests: “It’s taken me forever. People keep saying, are you still doing that degree?”
In keeping up a study course, not matter how slowly, King-Wall is an example of today’s classical ballet dancer – dedicated but not obsessed to the exclusion of all outside life, working hard but with a sensible eye on life after dance, all too aware of the brevity of the dancer’s career.
That doesn’t mean that dancers like King-Wall are not passionate about their artform. Quite the opposite. It means that they somehow manage to achieve great heights in one demanding career while at the same time preparing for another.
“He’s diligent and passionate,” says his on-stage partner Leanne Stojmenov, “– he’s always one of the group that uses the break after class to stay back and work on things, bettering himself.”
He may have learnt his self-discipline at home. Born in Waihi, NZ, he and his two siblings were home-schooled. His mother was a kindergarten teacher; his father a PE teacher. The homeschooling suited him because he could fit his studies around his dancing lessons as he became more serious.
“Not that I neglected my studies – in fact a condition of my coming and studying at the Australian Ballet School was that I had to finish my Year 12 first.”
By the time he got to the ABS at 16 he had done just that, and was academically ahead of most of his classmates. But because he wanted to “keep challenging my brain in a different way”, he filled in his free time with university studies, beginning his degree in history and classical studies.
He lapped up his life at the School, despite leaving home and being such a long way from his family.
“I was 100 per cent ready. I think being home-schooled I was keen to leave home; I wanted to be independent. You hear about a lot of guys being homesick but I wasn’t homesick at all! I was really excited to be here.”
Unlike with his academic studies, however, King-Wall did not feel advanced with his ballet training. “Most of the guys were more advanced and better technically than me.” Nonetheless, his talent was obvious from the start.
Dale Baker was his teacher in his graduate year. “Ty was a very good student, a very hard worker, and he had a good feeling for dance. Sometimes a pupil will have all the technical requirements, but they don’t have the feeling for movement. Ty was always able to move with a fluidity that was pleasing to the eye.”
Nonetheless, he and his pupil sometimes had their “run-ins”. “He was a very intense young man,” Baker says, “very focussed on his dancing. He could be moody. You can get that with students – it comes out of frustration with their inability to perform as well as they want to.
He was smart and very detail-oriented. He had to get everything exactly. Sometimes dancers can become so preoccupied [with detail] they lose their perspective. But it was because of that doggedness that he’s where he is now.”
King-Wall graduated dux with honours and joined the company in 2006.
“That was a bit of shock,” he grins, “going from the top of the school to the bottom of the company. My first role I was a huntsman holding up pheasants in Giselle and a pair of Borzoi dogs.”
But he was soon being singled out. His fair good looks, slender but muscular build, gracious bearing and all-important fluidity of movement, made him the choreographer’s choice for important roles.
Stanton Welch cast him as Florimund in his Sleeping Beauty in 2009, while Graeme Murphy picked him out for the role of Octavian in his The Silver Rose the following year. More major roles followed, long before his official rise to principal – such as the Prince in Peter Wright’s The Nutcracker (2010).
That year he also won the Telstra Ballet Dancer of the Year award, a sure sign of his popularity with audiences. In 2011 he was cast as Pinkerton in Welch’s Madame Butterfly. The following year he was cast as Lensky in Cranko’s Onegin, Prince Siegfried in Stephen Baynes’s Swan Lake and the Principal Man in Harald Lander’s virtuosic showcase, Etudes.
This year he performed Basilio in Nureyev’s Don Quixote, a performance which was the final prompt to his elevation to principal status. Artistic director David McAllister made a point of announcing his promotion on stage when his parents were in the audience.
It was only the second time his father had seen him perform – the first being his graduation performance. “His parents weren’t ballet followers and hadn’t expected their son to be a ballet dancer,” Baker says, “but they were excited that Ty had found his calling.”
Ty King-Wall’s rise has been swift, but it might have been swifter if he had not suffered so many injuries – “too many”, he sighs. They began with a knee injury in his very first year with the company to the most recent – a debilitating back injury from partnering during Madame Butterfly. He was off for seven months.
“We all go through it and you see dancers who’ve had long term injuries and come out of the other side and there’s a desperation in their eyes, that desperate need to be on stage. There’s no complacency – they’re never going through the motions.
Once [performing] is taken away from you you really cherish it – it’s a valuable lesson to go through as a dancer.”
It has been a lesson, too, in not just how much he needed to dance, but how much he should dance.
“I realised I was not working intelligently and if I kept going the way I was my body was just going to break down. I should be able to get the same result with less effort.
“It was a long rehab, and it didn’t always look like I was going to get better. So I had to take things back to basics, look at my technique, deconstruct it.”
He learnt that much of a dancer’s technique is achieved through repetition, but that constant repetition is not always necessary once you have mastered your body.
“There are certain elements that are ingrained in your body and you don’t need to just keep doing them.”
He has learnt to tailor his hours to requirements, saving his strength for when it’s most needed. “I’ve learnt to taper,” he explains. “I’ve learnt that it’s possible to have a natural rise and fall. Sometimes you can mark.It’s about being aware of how your body’s feeling and being honest with yourself.
“And also forward thinking – being able to see that you should back off to save yourself for something further down the track instead of just pushing all the time.”
He also makes sure that parts of his life are “no-ballet zones” and keeps Sundays free for his other pursuits – like following sport (especially cricket).
“I think it’s really important to have a work/life balance. I like to be able to leave things at work, not take them home. If I do that, I’m more focussed when I’m there.” (Though as his off-stage partner is fellow principal dancer Amber Scott, one imagines that a fair bit of work creeps into their conversation.)
Now, as a principal, he has an array of interesting and challenging roles ahead. “I feel I’ve just touched the surface, really,” he replies when I ask what roles he would most like to dance.
“There are so many I haven’t had the chance to do: Giselle, Romeo, Solor in Bayadere, I’d love to do Onegin himself. Everything in the classical canon – that’s what really resonates with me as a dancer – the characterisation and the emotional heart that’s in those roles. I love the process of injecting yourself into those roles and also that rapport you develop with your partner.”
He is less confident with contemporary ballet: “It’s a challenge for me. I don’t consider myself to be naturally a contemporary dancer, but I think again those things don’t necessary come naturally to you – you’re only as good as your weaknesses. I enjoy dancing those roles because I’m not good at them and I feel I’m making myself a better dancer.”
A classical prince with a world at his feet: Ty King-Wall can look forward to a stellar career – and maybe finishing his degree.
This article was first published in the August-September issue of Dance Australia magazine.