SARAH O'CONNELL

Originally from East Sussex, Sarah studied at the Legat School of Dance before heading to the Scottish Highlands for the remainder of her training at Ballet West. After completing her training, she was employed there as a dancer for their touring company. Being in rural Scotland, the company ran various outreach programs for children and adults, bringing the arts to villages and Islands where it was hard to access. It was here that Sarah discovered her passion for teaching and passing on the knowledge she had been fortunate enough to gain along the way. A few of these teaching posts were in resource centres for adults and young people with learning difficulties and Sarah took great joy in sharing her passion of dance and ballet in these special places.

Sarah then made the big decision to move to London and over the last 14 years she has worked as a freelance dancer in various shows such as Robert North’s The Snowman, Phantom of the Opera’s 25th Anniversary performance, at The Royal Opera House as principal dancer in Andrea Chenier and Manon which toured to Japan, as well as numerous productions at Glyndebourne Opera including Dream, Onegin, and Meistersinger among others.

Sarah has also danced with Neo-classical companies such as Independent Ballet Wales and The Curve Foundation. In 2012 she performed alongside Darcey Bussell in the Olympics Closing ceremony "Spirit of the flame" choreographed by Alastair Marriott and Christopher Wheeldon, which was one of the highlights of her career. She has also enjoyed working with the Gandini’s in their show 4x4 Ephemeral Architectures directed by Sean Gandini and choreographed by Ludovic Ondiviela which inspired Sarah to start learning circus skills which she now occasionally gets to use in performances.

Sarah has had over ten years of teaching in various private dance schools in London where she loved being creative and getting involved in making props and costumes for the ballet school shows.

In 2019 Sarah was awarded the Professional Dancers Teaching Diploma with Distinction by the Royal Academy of Dance and invited to teach permanently at the RAD headquarters in Battersea.

Now embarking on the next chapter of her career, Sarah is looking forward to joining the faculty at The International Ballet School here in Stockholm, and is very excited about experiencing her first snowy winter!