Danté Grootjes is not your average teenager, he’s on the fast track to success in hopes of becoming a world-renowned ballet dancer. To make it happen, he is enrolled in a hybrid high school program that allows him to graduate early while attending extra dance classes. “For me, dance is number one,” said Grootjes, who is a professional student dancer.
Grootjes has been the principal male dancer at the Mission Dance Company in Kelowna, B.C., for two years, where he has taken on the iconic roles of the Nutcracker, the prince in Swan Lake and s many others.
Sometimes he is playing multiple characters per show because there are not many male ballet dancers. “Every dancer’s journey is slightly different than another’s,” said Tanya Vadurova, Mission Dance Company’s artistic director. “When anyone wants to become a professional ballet dancer, they have to have that work ethic and the goal-setting and the focus and the determination, the grace, the intelligence and all those beautiful characteristics and when they go away to other professional schools, they learn very valuable lessons.
” Vadurova will be losing Grootjes in her company as he sets out to achieve one of the goals he has set for himself: to train at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School. He got a taste of it at this year’s summer program and has earned himself a spot in the Professional Division’s Ballet Academic program this fall. “You take classes every single day for three weeks and they basically.