She’s just 24, but Samantha Lynch has already danced on three different continents.
Currently a rising member of the Norwegian National Ballet, she is enjoying new repertory opportunities in a company she describes as “very open to new things”.
Lynch, a Melbourne native, trained at the Australian Conservatoire of Ballet. “My teacher Christine Walsh... saw my love for dance and pushed me to really go for what I wanted. I wouldn’t be where I am today without her.”
As she finished her training, Lynch sent out her audition video, hoping to find a good fit for her particular qualities. She is tall at 180cm (5’ 11”).
“I’m an acquired taste as a dancer, so it was important for me to find somewhere that liked my height and where I was interested in the repertoire,” she said. San Francisco Ballet responded with a traineeship. So she crossed the Pacific at age sixteen. After a year she moved to the Houston Ballet, and stayed for six years.
Meanwhile, she was being noticed. The American Dance Magazine featured her in its April 2011 “Dancer on the Rise” column. Yet, she found that “the longer I was in Houston, the less I got to dance. My style changed, what I wanted changed, and I wasn’t being used enough. I needed change.
I had been to Norway the previous year to audition. Ingrid Lorentzen, the new [NNB] director had said that she was interested and to stay in touch – so I did. I came back the following year and she offered me to start in four days if possible. So I went back to Houston, packed my things and moved to Europe in four days!”
A year and a half after moving to Oslo, Lynch is full of praise for her current troupe. “The company has an incredible repertoire, and I knew I really wanted to be a part of it.
“Among my two most special opportunities here was being the one woman in Kylian’s Soldiers Mass – the ballet is for 12 men but can have one woman if necessary. The challenge is to really be as strong as the men. It’s a heart-pumping piece physically and emotionally, and I remember (so does Ingrid) shedding a tear or two in the bows when I got to bring Jiri himself onstage. I finally felt I was home, that this if what I’d worked for.”
Another notable role was Daniel Proietto’s 12-minute solo Cygne, a striking contemporary counterpart to The Dying Swan. “It was an intense process. Daniel is quite incredible, and really makes you feel trusted. He told me, ‘you’re very young to be onstage by yourself for 12 minutes, but I see something in you.’ He really pushed me.”
In April, Lynch returned to Houston, representing NNB with a performance of Cygne at Dance Salad, an annual international festival.
See Lynch perform the entire Cygne solo on at www.danceaustralia.com.au/news/dancers-without-borders:-samantha-lynch
This article was first published in the August-September 2014 issue of Dance Australia magazine.