Talented local dancer Molly Clark has been accepted into the prestigious Brent Street’s full-time Performing Arts course in Sydney.

The 18-year-old will start her new venture early next year but will continue dancing at Mount Gambier’s MJ Dance Studio until the time comes. Ms Clark has danced at MJ for 14 years and said she danced for fun for a few years before starting competition.

“I have done it from such a young age, it’s what I have grown up doing,” she said. “I could not imagine doing anything else.”

Ms Clark said she auditioned elsewhere but Brent Street was her first choice. “I was very shocked,” she said. “It’s very exciting.” Ms Clark is fiercely talented and will train in varied styles of dance. Many Brent Street graduates have gained successful careers across Australia and internationally and students graduate as ‘triple-threat’ performers who can sing, dance and act.

“I’ll be getting to dance with lots of different choreographers, lots of like-minded people,” Ms Clark said. “It’s going to be the next step in my training to then, hopefully, get a career out of it.”

In the future, Ms Clark hoped to do showgirl work on a cruise ship and her end goal is the Moulin Rouge, but she is keeping her options open. “A lot of what we talked about at the audition was that you think you know what you want to do after you train full-time,” she said.

“But then you go to full-time and you might find that something that you have not always been the best at, like a style you have not been the best at, becomes your new favourite.”

Her acceptance into Brent Street was a step in the right direction towards bigger opportunities, but Ms Clark said she would not change the fact she has come from a small town. “It’s taught me that if I want to gain exposure and get more opportunities, you need to be the hardest-working person in the room,” she said.

“You need to be focussed on yourself, it’s a competition not with the dancers around you, but with yourself. “I’m grateful that, at MJ, that’s what we get taught.”