Two young dancers from Urmston have secured places in English Youth Ballet’s production of Swan Lake after competitive auditions in March 2026, joining a cast of 97 selected from more than 230 hopefuls. Elodie Catherall and Evie Fielding will now head into a demanding rehearsal period before the show reaches Palace Theatre Manchester on Friday 5 and Saturday 6 June 2026.
The pair are among eight young dancers from Kirsten's Dance Academy in Oldham who made the final cast, giving local families a rare chance to see children from the area appear in a large-scale ballet alongside eight international principal artists. Their training now includes 60 hours of rehearsals across 10 days, with daily company warm up classes and full cast performances designed to mirror the pace and discipline of a professional ballet company.
Catherall said she started dancing when she was one and a half years old, adding that she has always loved to sing and dance and that performing makes her feel happy. She said she is excited to perform in Swan Lake with English Youth Ballet on the “gigantic stage” at the Palace Theatre. Fielding said her own dancing began when her mother took her to baby ballet at the age of 2, and that she has been dancing day in and day out ever since.
Fielding said the chance to dance in a professional production and learn from the principal dancers would be amazing, and called the Palace Theatre a dream venue because she has watched many famous shows there. The production offers more than stage time; it places the young dancers inside a working structure built to reflect how a ballet company operates, with pressure, repetition and performance all part of the schedule.
Janet Lewis OBE said English Youth Ballet’s aim is to provide performance experience to aspiring young dancers in beautiful venues close to where they live. She said the children get to experience what life is like in a professional ballet company, learn how to develop artistic and performance skills, and improve technique. Lewis added that she is always amazed at how quickly the dancers progress and how positive they are when presented with new challenges.
That matters because Swan Lake is not being staged as a classroom exercise. Set in 1895 Imperial Russia, it follows Odette, a dancer with the Mariinsky Ballet, and Prince Sergei, son of the Tsar. For the Urmston dancers, the production turns months of training into a public test in front of a Manchester audience, with the final performances now the point where the auditions, rehearsals and long hours come together.
The question is no longer whether Catherall and Fielding can earn a place in the cast. They have done that. What now matters is whether they can carry the weight of a full-scale production and use the experience as a step into the next stage of their dancing lives.
