Ballet West student wins Molly Lake Award and heads for New Zealand for the Genée International Ballet Competition

Isabella Swietlicki, a 15-year-old student at Ballet West, Taynuilt, West Highlands, has won the prestigious Molly Lake Award for the “best British young dancer of the year”. She beat off strong competition from across the UK at the event at Northern Ballet, in her home town, Leeds, at the end of October.

Gillian Barton, Principal of Ballet West congratulated Isabella: “This is a remarkable achievement for Isabella and for Ballet West. She is an exceptionally talented and dedicated student and richly deserves her success.” This autumn she also won the solo section of the Festival for Stars in Wales.

Isabella now lives in Connel, close to Taynuilt and has been training as a dancer at Ballet West since she was 7-years-old. Her next challenge will be going to Wellington, New Zealand, to compete in the Royal Academy of Dance’s (RAD) Genée International Ballet Competition in December. Isabella was chosen as a “poster girl” by the Royal Academy of Dance to advertise the Genée Challenge earlier this year.

The Genée competition is open to students worldwide who achieved Distinction in the RAD’s Advanced 2 exams. Isabella will be joined in New Zealand by another colleague from Ballet West, 18-year-old Charlotte Eades, who is a 3rd year student and comes from Birmingham. She has danced solo roles in the Ballet West tours of Swan Lake in Scotland earlier this year, and in Romeo and Juliet tours in Scotland and China last year.

Source: Ballet West