For Brooke and Lachlan Monaghan, dance was a shared passion from a young age. Now both professionals, dance has taken them on different journeys far from Australian shores. Yet while each have busy schedules and are often continents apart, they are still immensely supportive of each other both as peers and performers.
Brooke and Lachlan recently made time to speak with Dance Australia for this interview on one of those rare catch ups – which on this occasion was in the UK where Lachlan lives and works as a Principal dancer with Birmingham Royal Ballet. As Brooke cruises the ocean with Celebrity Cruises – where she is currently a Dance Captain - home is wherever and whenever they are able to gather together under the same roof. Sharing birthdays and holiday seasons together doesn’t happen as often as they would like, but time together is cherished by both.
Despite being the younger sibling, Brooke was the first to start dance, aged just three years old at a local studio just down the road from where they were living at the time.
Brooke “I started with a combination class - jazz and tap – it was on a Tuesday night I remember. Within a year or two I was doing multiple classes and by the age of five I was pretty well into it, doing all different styles like lyrical, definitely still tap and jazz, and getting into their competitive eisteddfod scene as well. I think I had solos too… it definitely didn’t take long for me to get into it (dance), I obviously had a love for it back then and I remember that I was always at dancing.”
Lachlan “We’re four years apart so I was seven when Brooke started but did not want anything to do with dance at all. I did the soccer, gymnastics thing for a long time. But I tried (dance), they tried.”
Brooke “We used to do a lot of things. We were quite lucky with our parents actually, they took us to gymnastics, athletics, swimming… and then it got to a point with me that mum was like, you need to choose one (activity), because Saturdays were getting a bit too chaotic, and dance was the one that I chose.”
Lachlan “I think it was at that stage, that a really good friend of mine at primary school – his mum owned the dance school that Brooke was going to – K T Dancers – a really humble tin shed in a carpark at Pitt Town. It was just so local and such a great place to start to learn to dance, and I thought, you know what, I’ll go along and do tap class or something…”
Brooke Your first class was ballet, and you were put in a ballet class with me. Well, maybe you did something else first but one class you were definitely with me and all of my friends and I was like… What are you doing in here?!
Lachlan “Yeah, well clearly I was very inspired by you in that one ballet class! I started to do a bit of jazz and tap as well, and instantly got hooked – just like Brooke. And then, in a way, it started to bond us at home – that there was this mutual interest that we found through dancing.”
Brooke “I remember both of us went to Glenwood Tap for a while too, we met teachers there that started their own dance school and that’s where I found my love of ballet.”
Both Lachlan and Brooke went on to study at McDonald College, with Lachlan the first to start his training there in Year 7, while Brooke started in McDonald College’s after-hours training program in Year 5. Eventually, like Lachlan, Brooke was lucky enough to get a scholarship to McDonald College (for Year 6). By Year 7, Brooke was in the ballet stream at McDonald College and focussed on a potential career in ballet.
Lachlan “It’s interesting that our journeys were a little different. I joined (McDonald College) Year 7 in the dance stream, I wanted to maintain jazz, tap and everything we’d been doing so far. I wanted to keep hold of that somehow and Brooke was adamant (for herself) that it was just ballet.”
Brooke “Yeah, when I got to Year 7 I don’t think I did or wanted to do anything else, except contemporary – which was part of our course. I was solely ballet.”
Lachlan “And I was resistant to that (sole focus on ballet) for so long. Now look where we’ve ended up!”
As their dance commitments grew, commuting from their home in Pitt Town to McDonald College in Strathfield made for some long days.
Brooke “It was a good thing that we had each other. Every morning we were racing for the train together and if we were finishing at night, luckily mum would come and pick us up. Being that kind of distance (from McDonald College) made it quite a commitment and taught us a lot of things about having to get up at a certain hour and that also was part of the love of it. Because if we didn’t have the love, we wouldn’t have been able to do that every day – day in and day out.”
Lachlan “I’m sure we were the same, that if you woke up in the morning and said, ‘Mum, I’m not feeling very well I can’t go to school’ then she’d say ‘Well, you can’t go to dancing later’ and we’d say ‘Ok, I’m fine’. I think that was the level of passion that we both found within the arts.”
Despite rarely being cast to perform together, as children Brooke and Lachlan made up their own performances at home under the name L B Dancers (inspired by K T Dancers but using the initials of their then teacher).
Brooke “Lachlan used to choreograph and we’d put on full productions in our living room… solos, duos… once we did a duo at our primary school talent quest. But at home we’d put on concerts for our grandparents. Lachlan would make the program and we’d have a full list of things (routines), there were costumes...”
Lachlan “We dove in deep. We set up chairs, show-times and running times. I think we did Giselle- the ballet as a two-person show.”
Although their grandfather had done a bit of ballroom dance, and their mother had done some ‘physie’ (physical culture) there wasn’t anything else to explain the depth of passion these two siblings found, and shared for dance and performance at such a young age.
Lachlan “The one thing I think both of us would say is that we surrounded by music a lot… quite a lot of rock… Mum liked slightly more lyrical things like Celine Dion. There was a broad range of music styles, just the fact that the house was never quiet, I think, starts to inspire a kind of creative dance atmosphere. And music is a massive part of both our lives for that reason.”
Sibling rivalry wasn’t really an issue, although Brooke says she is a competitive person.
Brooke “I feel like we were pretty supportive of each other… There was one time we competed against each other in an eisteddfod, and I beat him, but his friends were all like, ‘Come on, you can do it!’”
Lachlan “Do you want that in bold?!”
Brooke “But back then when we competed in solo competitions there were (music) tapes that we had to hand in and Lachlan would make sure that mine was always wound back and come backstage with me. We would always rehearse each other… back in the day Lachlan used to try and give me corrections and I wasn’t fond of that - but now I feel like it’s similar to when we were growing up – we’re both supportive of what each other is doing, which is good.”
Lachlan “I mean, Brooke was such an incredibly talented young dancer and I was always quite fond of having a little sister, so our entire lives, it’s always been that connection. She was so good from so young and I think it’s quite rare to see that so I always tried to be supportive. Not that I had to try very hard to be honest with you. I think because of the age gap as well we weren’t ever close enough that we were going to give each other a challenge getting a place. When we did compete together it was all really in jest and a bit of fun. Which is a nice, playful camaraderie to have. Healthy competitiveness.”
Their first major physical separation came shortly after Lachlan won the City of Sydney Eisteddfod (then sponsored by McDonald’s) Ballet Scholarship in August 2009. Lachlan remembers it all happening very quickly, auditioning in London for the Royal Ballet School (RBS) in October and receiving his letter of acceptance in the last week of October. By the 3rd January 2010 he was in London and training at the RBS
Lachlan “It all happened in about eight weeks and I think it was a bit emotional for us both. Brooke couldn’t come over when I moved, she stayed at home with dad and I went to London with mum. Probably one of the hardest moments of my life really. Our bond just grew from there.”
Brooke “I remember when you won the scholarship. It was just such a proud moment for our family. He’d been in the finals the year before, but when it was announced our mum and I were so emotional – not that we didn’t think he’d ever get there but just thinking.. what’s next… And then, I remember the day he told me he got into the RBS. I’d just come out of ballet class and he popped his head around the corner with this big grin and said, ‘I got into the RBS, I got a full scholarship’. And I just couldn’t wait until he told mum because I knew how proud she would be. But then… our family is awful at saying goodbye. My mum burst into tears when he told her. They were happy tears, but also, ‘Now I have to let him go.’”
Lachlan describes his move to London and beginning training at the RBS as an equal amount of, “fear and excitement. I stepped into first year but it was already halfway through the academic year. Luckily I had auditioned with that year group, but it was quite a tricky thing to step into, starting in January rather than September, along with being just so homesick for the first few months… but it became one of the best experiences of my life in the end and I was really lucky with the opportunities I received there. Just to have gone to the school, let alone on full scholarship, and to have gone into Birmingham (Royal Ballet) from there – I mean, it’s life changing.”
Back home in Sydney, Brooke continued to work hard and focus on ballet until it was no longer a good fit. Like many dancers who aspire to a career in ballet over and above anything else in life, the process of realising and coming to terms with that was difficult and painful.
Brooke “I was doing my Advanced 2 and was wanting to do Genee (RAD Competition – since renamed The Fonteyn ) the following year. I was auditioning for various schools and it got to a point where I was just so overwhelmed. I had consumed myself with ballet so much because I loved it from such a young age, but in the end it actually got me to a breaking point where I was a bit obsessed with it.… Unfortunately I wasn’t the right body shape for ballet and I was getting a lot of comments with that. Like, I’ve always had muscular legs and while you obviously need to be strong for ballet it didn’t set me where I needed to be in terms of what was (considered) the ideal body shape at that time… Eventually I got to a point where I was like, this just isn’t making me happy anymore. And when I got my (Advanced 2) exam results they weren’t quite what I wanted as they weren’t enough to qualify for the Genée.”
Brooke knew she still loved to dance so started to diversify her skillset, auditioning successfully for Brent Street Academy and getting back into the jazz, tap and commercial she had previously excelled in. At Brent Street Brooke completed Year 11, 12 and a full-time course which she credits as, “really shifting me into becoming a more versatile dancer again. I re-found the love and joy of it. I learned a lot about how you look is how you sell yourself (to potential employers). You’re a brand in a way. I came out of Brent Street and went to cruise ship and musical auditions but it was hard because I didn’t have an agent. There aren’t many opportunities in Australia as we get a lot of touring productions so it can be hard to break through. I worked at Bloch for seven years actually. That was my part-time job, but in terms of auditions… I got to the point where I needed something else”
That something came via Brooke’s participation in a Willoughby Theatre Company production of Wicked, where she met a friend who was training at ED5. Too late for ED5 group auditions that year, Brooke was able to arrange a private audition with Elena de Cinque and found the ED5 team to be welcoming, professional, and honest about what they could see her performing in the future. Aged around 22-23 at the time of her ED5 audition, Brooke initially worried that she might be getting too old and remembers Elena saying, “That is the last thing you need to be worrying about.”
Brooke completed ED5’s 2 year full time course in 2018-2019 and is full of praise for the training she received there and the confidence it gave her.
Brooke “I got so much out of it. I learnt so much about my career and about myself. It (the course) was incredibly rewarding but it was tough and I paid for it myself by teaching dance and working at Bloch. I was basically studying 9-4 at ED5 Monday to Friday and fitting in work on evenings and weekends - so I was working or studying seven days a week. Knowing I did it all myself made it even more rewarding. By then my main goal was working in cruise ships and I was doing well in auditions.”
However, just a few months after graduating from ED5, in March 2020 the coronavirus hit Australia and the cruise ship industry shut down very quickly. At this time, Brooke started an online university degree in journalism. She took dance classes via Zoom and continued to work at Bloch and teach dance. Finding herself again treading water, and in a similar routine to the one she had been in prior to the ED5 course Brooke started emailing the cruise ships every fortnight and putting together a new showreel every month.
Brooke “I couldn’t sit still. I was like, I can’t put this to rest. This is what I want to do and I need to achieve this.”
As 2022 began, the pandemic restrictions were easing and Brooke travelled to Victoria and Queensland for cruise ship auditions. She started following a page on Instagram called Talent by Alyssa – an agent who then reached out to Brooke and added her to the agency. Before long Brooke’s new agent had secured her first cruise ship contract with Celebrity Cruises, with a starting date just two weeks away in Miami. Brooke is now mid-way through her 4th contract with Celebrity Cruises and is also a Dance Captain, which gives her extra responsibilities.
Lachlan “It’s always been with you, that determination, there was just absolutely no way you were going to give up on getting there and that’s been so inspiring for me in the years that obviously I didn’t get home as often as I would have liked, but whenever I came back, Brooke was a new woman again – this sort of constant redefining of herself as a performer and a person… You (to Brooke) fought to get that job, you really did fight and there was not a moment throughout covid you stopped dancing. I think that shows now why you’re continually determined to learn more. That’s the way you’ve built your career really and I think it’s incredible.” 
-Geraldine Higginson
This article was featured in the Dance Australia Audition Insight Issue Apr/May/Jun 2025