A young ballet dancer from the Sutherland Shire says his journey from Sydney to London’s West End and back has helped him find his identity in God.

Paul Russell, 22, hails from Miranda in Sydney’s south. Growing up in a Christian family and having a long-standing connection to St Luke’s, Miranda, he says he has always known about God. However, unlike many of his friends growing up, he also has a long-standing interest in ballet. This passion has taken him all the way to London’s Royal Ballet Company, learning his craft full-time in the scenic surrounds of London’s Covent Garden.

But it all started rather humbly – getting taken along, as a three-year-old, to his sisters’ dance classes. “My brother and I would watch our sisters’ dance class, and apparently I would dance along,” Mr Russell says. “The third child at the dance school was free, so Mum and Dad felt they had better take both of us along. Luckily James didn’t like it, I did, and so they got me in for free.

“Ballet itself I didn’t get into early on because it was all ribbons and stuff. I thought it was a bit lame.
But later on my teacher suggested I get into it – that it would be good for my dance technique. It was very different when I turned nine, because you would get to do jumps and turns and that kind of thing.”

From there, ballet continued to be a focus for Mr Russell. He went to Newtown Performing Arts High School but then left school to dance full-time, completing his School Certificate through distance education. Of this time, he says, “I was still going to church, but I didn’t take it that seriously.”

That changed, though, when he was accepted at age 16 to London’s Royal Ballet School. Not only was he living away from family, needing to fend for and make decisions for himself, but he also had an opportunity to engage with his faith in the new surroundings of a church in London.

“It was good to have an opportunity to go to church myself, to join a church family myself, not just go because my family went,” he says.

Spending six days a week for two years at ballet school, followed by a position with the New Zealand Ballet Company, led Mr Russell to rethink the place that dance had in his life and how to reconcile it with his faith.

“Dance has always been a part of my identity and it still is – it’s something I do and enjoy doing – but I suppose I’ve put a lot eggs into that basket growing up,” he says. “That was where my thoughts and energy went into, and that became a big part of who I was.

“Christianity and being a child of God were there as well, but that changed a lot in those years. Sometimes I was a Christian who danced, and sometimes I was a dancer that went to church. Sometimes dance was an idol, too much where I found my identity.”

Mr Russell has since taken time away from professional dance and is studying for a Bachelor of Arts at Macquarie University while performing on the side with the Austinmer Dance Company. He is also a youth leader at St Luke’s Miranda, co-leading the growing contingent of Year 9 boys.

“A little while ago we had one or two boys in Year 7, but over the last year or so we’ve had a lot more come along,” he says. “At our youth camp we had about 14, 15 boys, which brings its own challenges as well as growth. A bunch of them are non-Christians, and when you have that change in the balance of the group it changes the culture, but you just deal with it and work with it.”

One of Mr Russell’s other passions is trying to discover how best to integrate dance with faith. He has been involved with dance projects based on Christian themes, and is thinking about how to best minister over the next few years. But for now, he’s happy to be where he is, serving the Lord – with a jeté or two thrown in for good measure.