Former Belfast schoolboy rugby player lands spot at prestigious Italian ballet academy

A former schoolboy rugby player who swapped the scrum for the dance studio has landed a coveted place at a prestigious Italian ballet academy.
Only 18 months after trying ballet for the first time, Oscar Hunter, who played as a second row forward in rugby, is moving to Genoa to join the Fondazione For Dance school, which is run by the Russian Ballet College.
The opportunity arose last month after the Belfast teenager was scouted while performing at a festival in his home city.
It marks a remarkable sporting transition for 6ft 4in Hunter, who spent most of his childhood dreaming only of playing international rugby for Ireland.
The 18-year-old gave up rugby around four years ago after sustaining one of a series of concussion injuries. By that stage, the former Methodist College pupil admits he had fallen out of love with the game and was in need of a new passion.
“I started rugby when I was seven or eight. I remember one weekend I just didn’t have a swimming lesson on and my dad took me down to Cooke rugby mini (in Belfast) and, like ballet, I just fell in love with it,” he said. “I adored it. It became my whole world. It was something I wanted to do when I was older. It’s all I ever thought about, all I ever watched.
“And I moved to Methody (Methodist College) – it’s a very good rugby school – and I remember playing matches and enjoying it for a while.
“And then in about fourth year, I got a bad knock to the head. It was like probably my seventh concussion at that point from P2 or P3 and they held me in hospital for about a day, and I had to go to bed for about two weeks.
“And, at that point, I just thought, I’m not enjoying it any more. The culture isn’t that friendly. It takes something to be able to sap that much of a passion out of you – it took a long time, but eventually it happened.”
Hunter tried various sports in the two years that followed before his mother Siobhan, who had always insisted her son had good “ballet feet”, suggested giving a local dance school a go.
“I remember trying water polo and running, swimming, football even, and just none of them clicked,” he said.
Hunter then took a leap and signed up for a class at High Points Youth Ballet school in Belfast. He has been training with the school ever since.
“I remember going to my first class at 7pm on a Tuesday night and I was so nervous, but I just did the first class and I fell in love with it, and it became my passion,” he said. “So, it really happened out of the blue. You know I never thought if you asked me 10 years ago, or if you asked me three years ago, if I was moving to Italy to do ballet I would have said ‘you’ve got the wrong person’.”
The rare chance presented itself when a professional dance teacher who had travelled to Northern Ireland to give a masterclass at the Belfast International Ballet Festival watched Hunter perform. He subsequently reached out to the artistic director of the Fondazione academy and she then made contact with the teenager’s ballet school in Belfast.
“She said ‘send a few videos over, I’ve got one place left for this academic year’,” Hunter said. “I only have about five photos and one video because I’ve only been doing ballet for a year and a half now, but she said, ‘yes, come over and train with us for two years and see how it goes’.
“So really it happened in about 36 hours, out of nowhere, out of the blue, and I’m just still in shock a little bit, but I’m so excited.”
Hunter, who flies out to Italy on Saturday, said his ultimate dream is to be a professional ballet dancer. Having just received his A Level results – an A and two Bs – he had been planning on taking a gap year before receiving the unexpected invite from Genoa.
“I hope to make it to Christmas firstly,” he joked. “But, after the two years, the dream is to audition to get into a ballet company somewhere in Europe or somewhere in the UK and do it full time, get paid for it, and I would just be so grateful if that happened, because ballet is a very, very competitive industry, especially when you start as late as I did.
“But, really, I just want to enjoy what I’m doing now. I’m just happy where I am now, and if I know I give it my all, I don’t mind where I end up.”
Unable to secure the financial support that would have been on offer if he had gone to university, such as a student loan, and too late to apply for a bursary to attend the ballet school in Genoa, Hunter has set up an online fund raising page to help him pay for his training in Italy. – PA