Ballet girl Lisa back home for the hols.

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 3, Issue 1, 28 May 1985, Page 2

Ballet girl Lisa back home for the hols.

Back home in Ohakune for the holidays is Lisa Norling, who is a student at the New Zealand Ballet School in Wellington. During the day Lisa attends Wellington College, and then goes to ballet classes in the evenings and on Saturday. Lisa has 75 minute lessons four evenings perweek and spends three hours at the ballet school on Thursdays and Saturdays. Only five other girls were selected for the ballet school at the beginning of this year.

At the end of the year they will each have to re-audition to be able to stay at the school for a second year. Lisa's long-term aim is to join the New Zealand Ballet Company. As well as ballet lessons, the young dancers are given the opportunity to see top ballet performers in action and get to meet top overseas , ballet personalities. With ballet every day after school in additioh to homework, Lisa has little time to relax, but she had some idea of what she was letting herself in for before she started the course, as she travelled to the ballet school for lessons once a month from Ohakune before she moved to Wellington. Mrs Colleen Norling, Lisa's mother, gives her daughter her full support, as she believes parents have to be right behind their child-

ren if they are to succeed in a dancing career. Although she misses Ohakune and her old friends,

Lisa is determined to take advantage of the golden opportunity she has been given.