Outback teen trades riding boots for ballet shoes as she heads to Swiss dance school

Outback ballerina secures spot in prestigious European dance school Sat 1 Aug 2026 at 7:17am In short: Outback Queensland dancer Maddy Murphy will move to Switzerland this month after securing a spot in a prestigious dance academy. The 16-year-old is one of just 20-odd ballerinas to be accepted into Tanz Akademie Zurich. What's next? The teenager will spend up to four years in training, with the hopes of becoming a company dancer upon graduation. Growing up in outback Queensland, Maddy Murphy was just as likely to be in riding boots as ballet shoes. If the North West teenager wasn't with her horse, she was practising pirouettes in her lounge room or at the Julia Creek dance studio. The now-16-year-old will this month fly nearly 15,000 kilometres to the other side of the world to take a place at Switzerland's Tanz Akademie Zurich dance school. "It's still a bit surreal, honestly. I always told myself this is what I want to do,"she said. Maddy began her dance journey at five, when her mother, Belinda Murphy, enrolled her at Julia Creek's newly opened Branches Performing Arts. "She was always very theatrical," Ms Murphy said. Loading...Her teacher, Amy Tinning, said she noticed Maddy's "perseverance from a young age". "Talent can only take you so far, but Maddy had this maturity and commitment that isn't very common in someone so young," Ms Tinning said. From the bush to the big city With a population of just 550 people, the rural township might have had a dance studio but it didn't have a high school. When Maddy was 11, she packed her bags and leotards and moved more than 1,600km south-west to Brisbane for boarding school. But instead of after-school sport, she spent her evenings at the Prima Youth Ballet Academy. A year later, the young performer persuaded her parents to let her take up dancing full-time and finish her traditional schooling through distance education. "I saw other people were going full-time at my age, dancing all day and doing school at night online, and I felt that I really wanted to do that, too," Maddy said. "I'd wake up, do some school, dance from nine till four, come home and do all my schoolwork and then do it all over again the next day. "There were definitely hard times, don't get me wrong. The last thing you wanted to do when you came home from full days of dance was maths." When the Prima Youth Ballet Academy closed in early 2025, Maddy relocated to Dance North in Sydney, while continuing her schooling online. "I just found this love for ballet because it's so hard. You have to make it look easy, but it's such a complex form of dance," she said. She graduated from high school later that year at the end of year 10. "The pressure of doing all those hours and then trying to do school at night by yourself at home. We just thought that she can always go back," Ms Murphy said. Ticket to Europe Prior to graduation, Maddy won first place at the Brisbane International Contemporary Dance Prix and was awarded a scholarship to travel to Switzerland in March and spend a week auditioning for Tanz Akademie Zurich. "It was unlike anything I think I've ever experienced," she said. "There was the pressure to do well, but you also have to have the mindset that, 'This is what I've worked for, I'm ready.'" The 16-year-old was one of 21 other dancers from across the world to secure a place in the prestigious Swiss ballet school. "It's still a bit surreal, honestly. I think it'll finally sink in once I start packing," Maddy said. Her mother admits it'll be challenging having her eldest daughter living on the other side of the world. "It's nerve-racking [because] it's not a flight from Mount Isa anymore," Ms Murphy said. "But you can't bubble wrap them and you have to trust them." Prepared for anything The teenager is spending her last few weeks on Australian soil back in North West Queensland, spending time with family and her horses. "I will get homesick eventually because that's what happens. But I know I'll be OK with that because I've done it before," Maddy said. "I take bits and pieces of me from the outback to the city or wherever I go … that grit and hard work into my dancing. "I wouldn't change a thing about my journey or where I've come from." Maddy will spend the next three to four years in training, with the hopes of becoming a company dancer upon graduation. "There are no walls or boundaries in life unless you put them there," she said with a smile. "You have just got to work hard and do what you love, and nothing can stop you."