BARRIE ROBERTSON

I have been a professional ballet dancer, educator and director of movement programs for over 35 years. I have coached numerous students internationally, and taught masterclasses and workshops focussed on the Pilates method in the United Kingdom, Australia and Asia.

I began my professional dance training quite young, initially at the Victorian College of the Arts in my primary school years, moving to The Australian Ballet School in my early teens. I was immersed in a rigorous full-time training in a wide range of dance forms, Kinetic studies and anatomy. I was fortunate to be coached and mentored by such luminaries as Dame Margaret Scott, Dame Peggy van Praagh and the late great Rudolf Nureyev.

My professional years as a dancer were spent travelling internationally within various companies, and closer to home as a contracted artist with The Queensland Ballet. Diversifying my professional performance schedule, I explored my interest in other dance styles beyond classical ballet, furthering my experience with choreographic projects and teaching work. Dance related projects included choreographic work for the 1994 Livid Festival, trainee programs with the Melbourne University Artistic Directors' retreat accompanied by multiple forays into teaching and dance coaching. Most notably for the Sydney Dance Company's Adult Class Program, Head of Dance for the School of Performing Arts at St Michael's Collegiate, Tasmania, and guest teaching and training assessment invitations with Tasdance and Natanda dance companies, and La Salle College of the Arts, Singapore.

Throughout this eclectic mix of experiences via my role as a professional dancer, choreographer and teacher, I became fascinated with the applied science of biomechanical function and bodily kinetic integrity. After a somewhat sedentary role as manager of the Covent Garden Pineapple Dance Studios in London, I returned to Australia in 1999 feeling my years in the dance industry drawing to their professional close. Not one to be satisfied with inactivity, I took the initiative to undertake concentrated training as a Pilates instructor, and a new career pathway of alternative movement and intellectual stimulation presented itself to me. Soon I was managing Pilates studios, supervising Pilates education, and beginning to develop my own movement programs based upon the Pilates method.

Opportunities to extend my knowledge, once again took me abroad with travels to New York, training in sports massage and the AntiGravity Aerial System. The United Kingdom, for more extensive and nuanced training in the Pilates method, and Singapore for traineeships in pre- and post-partum Pilates, with a strong focus on the use of the Pilates Reformer apparatus.  During the 12 years from 2004, I ran a Pilates studio and on-line practice in Singapore, until returning to Australia to continue working in the Pilates field and to develop my Morphmat business.