Mid Sussex ballet dancer's hard work during Covid lockdown pays off

Joel Martin, who attends St Paul's Catholic College in Burgess Hill, recently starred in Drusilla Duffill Theatre School's Footnotes at The Hawth, Crawley.

He also secured a place on the prestigious London Royal Ballet School’s associate program both this year and last year.

Joel, who lives in Hurstpierpoint, kept training when the lockdown started in 2020.

“I knew that I needed to keep exercising because we didn’t know how long the quarantine was going to last,” he said.

Proud mum Larna, 51, used to teach rhythmic gymnastics and encouraged her children Joel and Joshua to stay active.

Joel said home training involved stretching and exercises like skipping, as well as Drusilla ballet classes on Zoom.

“We did different exercises of grade work,” said Joel, explaining that there were exam-style sessions before moving onto other grades.

He added: “It was difficult to teach new moves as we weren’t able to properly do it with the teacher, so we couldn’t get corrections.”

Room size was a factor too, said Joel, with lots of bar work instead of practising bigger moves.

Joel joined Drusilla Duffill Theatre School five years ago and now performs ballet, modern dance, musical theatre and Acro.

He won a bronze British Gymnastics medal in Acro with his partner this May as part of the Acro NDP finals, having been coached by Alison Barugh from the Triangle Acro gymnastics club in Burgess Hill.

To get on the Royal Ballet School’s associate program last year he had to submit a video audition, then had to perform in an exam this year to remain on it.

“I thought it was very cool because I got to learn quite a few new moves that I haven’t done before,” said Joel.

He also got on to the acclaimed RBS’s intensive five-day residential program last summer and will be on it again for 2022.

Joel enjoyed this summer school and loved performing in Footnotes too.

He said: “It’s really fun to perform in front of people and use my talent to entertain them and I find it quite a social thing as well because I have lots of friends in the dance school.”