Tracee Micallef

When I was younger my grandmother really wanted her granddaughter to dance. So, it was her that first pressured my mother to take me to a ballet class, from where I understand it. I started ballet at the age of four and I learnt with a lady called Elizabeth Wood. And I just remember driving to her house with my mum to the studio in the bottom of her house.

I remember that it was just joyful. When I close my eyes, I can still remember the light coming through the window, tapping and everything. Elizabeth always made me work hard and I stayed with her until I was eight, and I have also done also tap with her and started to go into ballet competitions.

At the age of 8 I was awarded the Shell Trophy which is the state trophy for the dancer with the overall highest score in the SASDS of that year. I was in the papers and everything. I went from there to what was called the Adelaide College of Dancing with Gwen Mackay and Helen Beinki. I stayed there until I was 14 and had a ton of opportunities. I danced on a Saturday Night Live show, we did pantomine in holidays, and we did competitions. It was fantastic and I remember loving every minute, even though I was really pushed to work hard.

By the age of 14 I decided I was going to be a ballerina and I got special dispensation at school to study with Helen Beinki for two years full time. I successfully completed my Royal Academy of Dancing (RAD) Advanced examinations and received an invitation to compete in the Adeline Genee Awards in London but I went to Sydney to compete in the Sun Cup where I was a finalist. At that time it was the biggest ballet competition in Australia.

I competed. I did my exams. I loved pressuring myself into achieving a goal and everything. After that I went to the Centre for Performing Arts (CPA) in 1980 and was in one of the first groups that graduated from there. I went to Sydney with the Kinetic Energy Dance Company.

When I was 20 years old, I had a bike accident and I couldn´t be anywhere near ballet knowing all my friends could still do it and I couldn´t. It was too heartbreaking. After that I´ve tried other styles of dance, like the vernacular jazz that now I teach at Dragonfly Dance. I did a bit of eerobics and even taught for a while and a little bit of Zumba.

I used to do Lindy Hop with my husband, which I love because we have such a great time doing. We did some performances in community centres. And it was very good to me because we used to perform in little community centres, so I could have the chance to start again to work on my memory, to remember routines, to work with a group of people.

A few years ago, I had a neurological incident and I decided life is too short not to do what you really love and give It a go. So that´s when I decided to go back to ballet in the year of 2022 at Dragonfly Dance and in 2023, I started also to teach. So that´s my dancing journey and now I am completely in love with dance again.

I think the things I learned from my dance training enable me to do what I did. Because I left school when I was 14 years old, I had no education. Even before that, in year 10, I had good grades. The discipline to know that I needed to do school while I was travelling to dance.

After I had the accident, I got married almost immediately, when I was 21. I saw myself at 24 being a solo mum and the ability to kick my nose and do some pirouettes and not much else. I decided I wanted my son to be proud of me, so I did an adult test for university and I got into that, and gained my law degree and business degree. Its was absolutely the discipline from dance that enable me to work full time, being a single parent and get two degrees. In between that I took a job in Canberra, moved states with my son.
I never used to do just one thing, and I know it´s the training and discipline from ballet in that first instance. Never give up sort of thing that is instilled in you if you want to succeed as a dancer that helped me through everything else.