Dancing pastime turns serious

New teachers: ACPA-bound Iesha Saltner (right) and cousin Bree Himstedt take a breather after Kiyua Performing Arts’ end of year performance, ‘Together we rise’

Toowoomba’s Iesha Saltner has won a place at the Aboriginal Centre for the Performing Arts.

In 2012, the talented 18-year-old will take her place in Brisbane among some of the country’s most promising new artists as she pushes her dancing to the next level.

Iesha’s achievement is all the more impressive for the fact that, until three years ago, she had not received a single, formal dance lesson.

She attributes her success to the direction she’s been given by the Kiyua Performing Arts group in Toowoomba (see story below). “It started with Kiyua,” she said. “I heard about it and wanted to join – to learn to dance and be a part of something.”

Iesha’s cousin, Bree Himstedt, has been a student of Kiyua almost since it began. Each is now recognised as a teacher with Kiyua and, together, developed the performance routine that helped Iesha to land her spot at ACPA.

ACPA established itself as “a centre of training excellence and innovation in Australian Indigenous contemporary performing arts”. Each year, more than 70 people study there. Anyone who wants to join has to earn their place.

“You had to do a three-minute audition and then you had to do a talk to three different people and tell them about your life,” Iesha said of her interview. It was a full-day effort.

Sheriden Wright, the founder of Kiyua, expects Iesha to shine. “She has a lot of talent,” Sheriden said. “She doesn’t stand out on stage, necessarily … because she’s very shy. She withholds a lot of that potential, but I know down in that (ACPA) environment, they’ll bring that out of her. It’s there; it’s just sitting on the surface waiting to blossom.”

Iesha says she’d like to learn as much as she can from her time at ACPA and then pass it onto a new generation of dancers. “(I’d) probably (like to be) a dance teacher; that would be cool,” she said.

“Travelling – it would be fun to see everyone else.”

Kiyua: the free spirits

Kiyua Performing Arts is a community-based effort to open up the performing arts to children who wouldn’t normally be able to afford it.

The brainchild of dance teacher Sheriden Wright, it harnesses the youngsters’ imagination with a mix of drama, dance and martial arts.

Sheriden spent 26 years as a dance teacher to children whose families could afford to pay but yearned to help those who missed out. “I decided to start up a project to allow kids from low socioeconomic families and lifestyles to have a chance to be part of the performing arts, which is usually a costly type of activity for kids to do,” she said.

“We started off in 2004 (with) about 20 kids and all of a sudden, it bloomed from there. We’ve got kids from all walks of life — Indigenous children, kids from Africa, kids from China; all different kids.”

Sheriden and her partner, policeman Tony, are supported by a network of volunteers who run classes at both the Drayton Memorial Hall and Wilsonton Primary School Hall. However, it is the children themselves who do the teaching.