There are a few formative Mr B’s in the ballet world. For some it’s George Balanchine. For others Maurice Béjart. For many a Sydney ballet student, the Mr B lovingly referred to is John Byrne.
“Run like the wind!” “Allongé!” “Epaulement ladies!” In his melodious tone, these refrains echoed through studios across Sydney from the early 1980s translating ballet instruction from technique into artistry.
A shy, sensitive Catholic schoolboy from the south-western suburbs of Sydney, Byrne’s early inclinations towards dance were not encouraged. He did not formally attempt a plié until the age of twenty-one—and even then, in secret. “I used to wash my dance clothes late at night and hang them behind the garage so no-one in the family could see them.”
It was his school friend Robert Ray—later a distinguished pedagogue himself—who coaxed Byrne into his first ballet class at the Scully-Borovansky School in Kent Street, taught by former dancer Lou Eather. Byrne’s athletic body—conditioned by competitive swimming, diving, and athletics—adapted quickly and within just two years he’d achieved a commended result in his RAD Advanced examinations.
At twenty-five a classical career was off the cards, but Byrne’s natural talent and innate theatricality found a home in musicals—first in Sydney and later, on the London stage. After seven years performing, including nigh on 600 shows of Billy at Drury Lane, he was ready for new challenges. An Australia Council grant took him back into study, this time in Arts Administration in London which along with lectures in marketing and psychology taught the invaluable lesson that nothing is possible without good financial management: “No money, no show.”
Restless back in Sydney, where work in arts administration proved patchy, he noticed an advertisement for a teacher training course at the Royal Academy of Dance in London—it was a eureka moment. He had never imagined himself as a ballet teacher, but in the RAD’s studios he found his tribe: like-minded people devoted to dissecting and passing on that most singular of artforms—ballet. For Byrne[LF1] , the discovery was revelatory: tutors such as Joan Lawson, a pioneer in dance anatomy and physiology, made the mechanics of movement intelligible, giving as much weight to the how as to the what.
Returning to Australia, Byrne soon became one of Sydney’s busiest freelance ballet teachers, working at its top schools including Tanya Pearson Academy, Nicholina Kuner’s Academy Ballet and The McDonald College. Throughout the 1980s his lessons became legendary. Former student Josef Brown describes the “drug-like joy” of Byrne’s classes: “whatever he was on, I wanted some of that!” It wasn’t that Byrne didn’t set the bar high. He most certainly did—“But he made you want to reach it for yourself,” Brown recalls.
Danielle Williams, once his student at the Tanya Pearson Academy, recalls how Byrne’s lightness and humour put everyone at ease: “Don’t let your inside thigh muscles be victims of gravity,” he would say, or, “Soft nostrils, not snooty!” Alongside the wit came a deep reverence for the upper body: “Care for your port de bras. Cherish it. It is the soul of technique.” Now a teacher herself, Williams realises what a gift it was: he never played favourites, never lost his temper—no small ask in a studio full of teenagers.
The Academy quickly recognised Byrne’s gifts, and within just five years the momentum carried him from becoming an examiner to Principal Tutor of the Professional Dancers’ Teaching Diploma; then to Artistic Director and Chair of the International Board of Examiners. To hold even one of these posts was remarkable; to hold both—let alone as the first Australian, and a late starter at that—was unprecedented. His father didn’t live to see his son’s extraordinary achievements, but his mother was proud, however much the ballet world remained a mystery to her.
During his years at HQ he co-authored Body Basics—still regarded by many teachers as a bible—and, of particular note, created a new Boys’ Advanced syllabus, one that married steps and music with intention, ensuring the music reveal rather than obscure the exercise—an approach that defined his belief in classroom exercises as teaching tools, not choreography.
Appointing Byrne was appointing a change-maker—a bold move for an institution set in its ways. He set about small reforms: replacing numbers with names on exam candidates, changing “fail” to “unsuccessful,” and convening international examiners to ask important questions—who were these major exams really for, and why were so many candidates failing? Yet the 1990s was a turbulent time at the Academy as it wrestled with financial crises and the rise of corporate management. After three years Byrne chose to resign. His mother’s health was failing in Sydney, and there were students to teach.
Back in Sydney, Byrne was approached by Peter Cornish, then headmaster of SCECGS Redlands: would he mind, perhaps, creating a premier ballet and dance academy within the school? And so Byrne became the inaugural Head of Ballet and Dance, charged with building an academy of excellence from scratch inside a high-performing grammar school—and within two years, his students were not only presenting HSC Dance but topping the state. “You could pick a Byrne-trained student,” reflects former Australian Ballet Artistic Director David McAllister, “they all had his hallmark classicism, line, and quality.”
Eight years later, having set Redlands firmly on its path, Byrne—now sixty—was ready for another chapter. His mother had passed, and change was in order. He moved to Melbourne to teach at the Australian Ballet School and Victorian College of the Arts while continuing to travel as examiner. But the questions he harboured about syllabus training were only intensifying.
In 2014, nearing seventy, it felt like now or never. He retired from examining and resolved to make his own contribution. Classical Dance Australia (CDA) was born: his own syllabi and teacher-training programmes built on the clarity, musicality, and logic that defined his teaching.
“Dare to be simple” is one of his first instructions, and his exercises embody this—giving space to each element, with timing and accents that train the body as it works. Danielle Williams, who now teaches CDA at her Gold Coast school, says her students are so enamoured with the work they request it like a tonic. Sydney teacher Hilary Kaplan FRAD, co-principal of Alegria Dance Studios and an international RAD examiner, calls it “an incredible pedagogy of all-round training—ingraining technique in the muscles of the lower limbs to free the upper body.”
Ten years on, having shared the syllabus with 700 teachers worldwide, Bryne is optimistic about the future of dance pedagogy. Not least with the arrival on the scene of the Royal Ballet School’s Affiliate Training and Assessment Programme initiated by fellow Australian, Mark Annear. Rather than a syllabus, this programme is a system of pedagogy—equipping teachers with the tools to teach—a re-focus Byrne sees as long overdue. Ballet is among the most demanding of dance techniques, and students, in the end, largely teach themselves, says Byrne. The teacher’s responsibility is to ensure they are armed with the clearest and most accurate information to do so.
Now eighty, with the baton in others’ hands, Byrne is stepping aside from full time teaching yet he resists the word retirement —it sounds far too much like withdrawal. What he feels instead is like a coming home and its freedom to pursue other passions that have been waiting in the wings—interior design, writing, gardening, travel—“Boredom doesn’t stand a chance!” he laughs.
Looking back across a life in dance, he sums it up with a line he cherishes from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: “I am a teacher: first, last and always.” The word always leaves no room for retirement. That suits him fine.
-Emma Sandall
This article was featured in the Oct/Nov/Dec Issue of Dance Australia