Funding Woes Put Ballet School at Risk of Curtain Call

The Queensland Ballet may need to consider closing its training academy by the end of 2024 due to a lack of funding, its chief said. The company wrote to federal arts minister Tony Burke in April to press for extra money, and its executive director Dilshani Weerasinghe said the academy’s students and their families may not be aware of the situation. “We dance hard, we hustle hard to make the model work, families, and students would not be feeling this level of crisis,” she told AAP. The company as a whole received $848,000 (US$565,000) from Creative Australia in 2024 and a further $50,000 (US$33,000) from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, accounting for 2.8 percent of $31.5 million (US$21 million) in operating expenses....