Dancing king
From Hoon Hay to Big Apple
Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson dances for up to 10 hours a day and has calluses on the soles of his feet and toes.
The Christchurch dancer is understood to be the first New Zealander to be accepted by the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City.
He said the intense training over the past three years had changed his feet.
‘‘We dance barefoot so, you get big calluses on your toes and on the soles of your feet,’’ he said.
‘‘We like them, because they help you with grip and turning on your feet, but they look pretty gruesome.
Guillemot-Rodgerson was raised in Hoon Hay, started dancing when he was 4 years old, won a scholarship to an arts academy in Michigan when he was 13, and became one of 24 dancers to be accepted to Juilliard at the age of 17 in 2013.
He will feature in a TV One show next week about Kiwis following their dreams. He is in his final year at Juilliard and contemplating his future after graduation in May.
‘‘I’m still very nervous about what might lie ahead after leaving the safety of an education setting. I will have to live in the real world with real life problems and power bills and things like that,’’ he said.
‘‘I would like to dance in a company and hopefully I can be in a company that tours a lot to see the world and see dance around the world. What I have learnt here is that dance is a constantly growing and thriving art form and there is so much I can’t learn being in one place at one time.’’
Even though he lived in Michigan for three years, it was still a culture shock moving to New York City.
‘‘My first year in New York was probably the most homesick I have been. It is so different, there is hardly any grass and all these tall buildings. I live on the 28th floor of my residence hall. I don’t think I had been in a house more than two storeys before coming here and now I’m 28 storeys up.
‘‘It’s a very dreamy place, but I miss the quietness I can find at home..’’
He has funded the four-year course with the support of his family, scholarships, grants from foundations and fundraising concerts. ’’I come from a household with a single mother and my first few years were very draining on my family, but they supported my dream.
‘‘The community around me has been fantastic. I have always felt very anchored to New Zealand because of that.’’
"We dance barefoot, so you get big calluses on your toes and on the soles of your feet.''
Joshua Guillemot-Rodgerson