23-year-old Amelia Drummond has been named the recipient of the 2019 Emerging Female Classical Choreographer Initiative. A partnership between The Australian Ballet, Sydney Opera House and Dance Australia Magazine, the initiative will see Drummond take up an artistic residency at the Opera House and create a work for TAB’s Bodytorque program in October. The announcement was made on the stage of the Joan Sutherland Theatre following TAB’s triple-bill performance of Verve on Tuesday.

Amelia Drummond. Photo supplied

Drummond, from Canberra, received dance training from the age of nine. She graduated with a Diploma in Dance from Melbourne’s The Australian Conservatoire of Ballet before moving to Germany at 16 to complete a Bachelor of Arts in Dance at the Mannheim University of Music and Performing Arts, where she began to develop her choreographic skills. Drummond currently dances with the Badisches Staatsballett Karlsruhe.

Drummond was chosen from over 40 entries by a panel of judges that included TAB’s artistic associate and principal coach, Fiona Tonkin; the head of Contemporary Performance at SOH, Olivia Ansell; former Artistic Director of Expressions Dance Company, Natalie Weir (a former resident choreographer for TAB); and Dance Australia co-editor Karen van...