Welcome to City Dance Centre, Melbourne’s premier dance centre for professional and adult classical ballet and jazz classes
Veteran dancer and ballet master/teacher Paul DeMasson (Australian Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, Hamburg Ballet , Singapore Dance Theatre) together with his wife Sakura Shimizu whose experience as a dancer also includes acting and teaching (Hamburg Ballet, Suzuki Ballet Yokohama, Singapore Dance Theatre, Melbourne Ballet Company) took over from Adrian Fryer and Mary Renouf (who established CDC in 1997) in 2011.
City Dance Centre offers classes for all levels of dancer, which are conducted by professional teachers with extensive experience teaching and performing.
Morning classes are geared to the professional dancer or advanced student. We understand how hard it is to maintain a classical standard if you are not attending a school or dancing in a company full time. With that in mind we try to accommodate the dancer with classes that develop technique and technical standard while at the same time enhancing their artistic development and stamina.
For adults we have classes through the week in the evenings, at various different levels, including our beginner beginners class. You may have danced as a child or never danced before but it’s never too late to start! And no bookings are necessary for any of our classes.
We also offer private classes if you wish to work on technique and private coaching, for students who have exam solos or professionals brushing up on their repertoire. These are available on request.
Paul DeMasson 1953 – 2012: a life lived through dance!
Paul started his career at the age of 14 with the West Australian Ballet and then moved to Europe to dance with the Ballet de Marseilles performing Roland Petit’s repertoire, including Petit’s ‘Pink Floyd Ballet’ with Pink Floyd playing live.
Moving to London he danced with the London Festival Ballet (now the English National Ballet) working with many icons of dance including Massine, Tudor, Nureyev, Skeaping and Markova. In 1976 he joined the Australian Ballet at the invitation of Sir Robert Helpmann and performed all of the major classical repertoire as well as new ballets by Kylian, Tetley, Murphy, Moreland, Prokovsky, Welch and others.
He was a guest dancer and teacher for numerous companies and schools including Queensland Ballet, West Australian Ballet, Norwegian National Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, Phillipine Ballet Theatre, National Ballet of Canada, Singapore Dance Theatre, Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts, Hong Kong Ballet, Suzuki Ballet Yokohama and principal dancer with Bern Staatsoper
Switzerland.
He was ballet master at the Australian Ballet, The Royal Danish Ballet, The Hamburg Ballet and Singapore Dance Theatre. Returning permanently to Australia he taught regularly at the Victorian College of the Arts and the Australian Conservatoire of Ballet while performing as a guest character dancer with the Australian Ballet.
It was Paul’s love of performance and the art of dance that he sought to pass on to the many dancers, both young and old, he mentored and encouraged during his time at City Dance Centre, prior to passing away in January 2012.