A little over a year ago, dancer and choreographer Robbie Ordoña took a bow on stage, absolutely overwhelmed with emotion. He had just played a leading role in Kate Prince’s Message in a Bottle at the Sydney Opera House, and his family, in the audience, had flown from the UK to see him perform. “I just cried,” he says. “And I’m not even a crier! To stand there, linking arms with the whole cast, it was such an emotional moment. And to be able to achieve a lifelong dream, standing on stage at Sydney Opera House and performing in such a show … it was incredible. I thought: ‘This is what everything was for.’”
His journey to taking centre stage at one of the world’s most famous cultural venues started 10 years earlier when, as a 14-year-old, he started making the arduous three-hour round train trip from his home in Shepperton, north Surrey, to Croydon, south London, to go to school. “It took a certain level of commitment,” he says. “Thank God my train stop was the last one on the line. I’d often fall asleep and find the conductor telling me it was time to get off.” The reason he was willing to travel so far was that he had managed to get a place at the prestigious performing and creative arts school, the Brit School.
