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.
Founded by Sir Mark Featherstone-Witty in 1991 – and supported by the British Record Industry Trust – the school, which is free to attend, is said to be modelled on the theatre school in Alan Parker’s teen musical film Fame. It was Ordoña’s mum who introduced him to the idea of the Brit School, after he found life in regular classes tough. “The normal education system wasn’t really it for me,” he says. “I was always quite smart academically, but I struggled to focus in class. I was getting into trouble, and I was just interested in dancing.”
At the Brit School, just two of the 25 places on its dance course were open to applicants, such as Ordoña, who were out of the catchment area. But he applied, and was offered one of those spots. When he started, he says, it felt just like theatre schools he’d seen on TV and in film.
“I remember my first week, we sat on the grass out the back and some of my new friends were musicians, and they’d play chords on their guitars and we’d jam out over lunch. There’s people singing everywhere. You walk around and there’s inspiration all around. There’s that really nice appreciation for other people and their own creative backgrounds that you mix with.”
True to form, there have already been standout artists from his school year: Brit Award-nominated Cat Burns, who shot to fame with Go, was a good friend of Ordoña’s. She wrote her debut album with a fellow student known as Txm.Smrt – and Ordoña was there for her first ever gig in a north London pub almost a decade ago.
The Brit School educates 1,450 students aged 14 to 19 to a professional level in music, film, dance, digital design, visual arts and production. It is able to call on a stellar network of industry contacts, trust members and former students who have gone on to find success in their fields and who regularly return to pass on their knowledge and skills through lessons and workshops.
Another level of support comes from Mastercard, which uses its annual sponsorship of the Brit Awards, one of the biggest nights in British music, to give Brit School students a chance to showcase their talents to the industry’s top names.
In the run-up to this year’s event, it offered students hands-on work experience with the creative companies involved in the awards ceremony. Now in its 27th year of sponsorship, Mastercard aims to give young artists the exposure they need to break into the industry and realise their dreams, whether on stage or behind the scenes in production and lighting.
The creatives who took part will see their work come to fruition when the Brit Awards 2025 take place at the O2 in south-east London and are beamed into homes across the UK.
Ordoña still cherishes the access he had to industry insights – sessions with former students such as choreographer and movement director Shay Barclay, who has worked on everything from the film Snow White to the Spice Girls 2019 world tour, and Luke (LPJ) McCabe, a creative director and show designer. “Since Luke came in to the school, I’ve built up a good friendship with him,” Ordoña says.
Dance artist Dylan Mayoral, who was about to leave the school when Ordoña joined, was also an inspiration, as he was already working while still in class. “He would bring a suitcase in and be like: ‘I’ve got to go and teach in Spain now,’” Ordoña says. “I’m like: ‘You’re doing your A-levels, how are you teaching in Spain?’”
He credits the school with fostering a sense of consistent commitment within him. There was a feeling of “I’m lucky to be here and I don’t want to risk that”, he says. “Which I think does set you up for the real world, especially in the dance world. Brit really set me on the straight and narrow in that sense.
“But it also gave me an element of freedom, not to be put into a box at such a young age, like in normal school you can be told: ‘This is your route, this is the route you have to take.’”
His own journey has taken him from being part of the school’s Khronos Agoria dance group and being selected by the National Youth Dance Company, to performing in productions around the world – in the West End, on Broadway and his pinch-me moment in Sydney – and making a name for himself as a choreographer.
Even now, seven years after graduating, Ordoña says he’s always reconnecting with the far-reaching network of ex-Brit students. “I bump into old Brit people all the time,” he says. “It’s more weird if you don’t bump into anyone on set! On the Message in a Bottle international tour with Sadler’s Wells, there were four of us who came from Brit. We were from four different years, but we made sure when we did our first show together we took a picture of us all on stage and sent it back to Brit. It’s something I know the school really likes to hear about and see, like we’re a family, and connected throughout your career.”
Ordoña’s now putting his energies into his own dance and choreography collective, Sansetsukon, that he set up with his friends, Joshua Shanny-Wynter (a former Brit student) and Deavion Brown. Ordoña also goes back to teach and choreograph regularly at Brit. “I love it,” he says. “The school gave me so much and I felt first-hand what an impact it can have on your future career. As any teacher knows, the best teaching environment is a space where all the students are hungry and driven; this is always the case at the Brit School.”
Ordoña’s full circle moment will hopefully set even more Brit students on their own ambitious paths to global creative success.
Mastercard is proud to sponsor The BRIT Awards and support The BRIT School. Discover more at mastercard.co.uk/BRITs
