It was a rocky first year but ultimately Tara got everything that she wanted. A place in the top dance school in the country. Friends she’ll know forever. She fell in love – twice! And even danced the role of her dreams.

Second Year should be a piece of cake. When the semester begins Tara is excited about being back at the Academy and thrilled that for the first
time in many years the world’s most prestigious ballet competition the Prix de Fonteyn is going to be held in Sydney.

Through a series of State and National competitions, two girls will be chosen to represent Australia and Tara’s greatest dream is that she might be one of them.

However these plans go awry when she clashes majorly with her new teacher Saskia Duncan a soloist in the National Ballet Company. If the
cutthroat politics of the ballet world weren’t enough Tara’s personal life is definitely going to keep her on her toes!

At the end of last year she was left with a choice of whether to stay in Sydney with Ethan over the holidays or go back to the farm with Christian.

She returns to the Academy, happier than she’s ever been, but fairly soon real life sets in. This is another rollercoaster year for Tara with dizzying highs of fun, laughter and triumph but also some heartbreaking lows.

It’s when the truths she held to be self-evident begin to crumble and, while she will always retain her innocent heart, she does things she’s not proud of and lets jealousy occasionally take control.

Like Abigail before her Tara has to learn how to keep striving when she’s no longer the exciting new talent. All she can do is love dancing and hope that love is enough to guide her through.




No longer at The Academy, Kat is expecting to be sent away to boarding school whilst her mum takes part in yet another worldwide tour.

However for once her mum surprises her in a good way and turns down the tour in order to give Kat
a proper family life.

The only problem Kat has is now she’s not a dancer who is she?
Kat wanted her parents to be involved in her life but now that they are it’s really strange. Natasha packs her lunch and drives her to school each day Sebastian checks that her homework is done on time.

It’s a bizarre new world order but Kat actually really likes it.
If only Ethan and Sebastian were getting along better life would be great.

What’s harder for Kat is she’s just started at a non-dancing school and for the first time in her life she’s finding it difficult to make friends.

The popular girls are unimpressed with the new kid
and ostracise Kat so much she’s soon eating her lunch by herself in the disabled toilet.

After a shaky start Kat does make friends, but the thing is Kat doesn’t know who she is anymore or what she wants to do with her life.

She’s behind academically and she’s not sure she cares. When a commercial dance agent approaches Kat she decides she may as well give it a try.

Now a part of the commercial dance world, Kat auditions as a cheerleader (not peppy enough) and then she actually gets a job as a dancer on the Moulin Rouge it seems like the perfect job at the perfect time yet Kat just isn’t ready for it.

She makes the mistakes of a young dancer and is eventually fired. Kat is really low if only she could do her life over again.

Then again maybe she can and maybe she can take it seriously this time. Kat can’t believe it but she wants to go back to the Academy!

It’s not going to be easy but for the first time in her life Kat is prepared to go out on a limb
and with the help of her friends fights to get her body back into shape and auditions for Miss Raine.




When his father insists that Sammy attends an elite academic school and refuses to continue paying the Academy fees Sammy is left with no
choice but to cut off all contact with his family and pay his own way.

It’s an enormous undertaking for a sixteen-year old & given his fifty-hour week school timetable his father thinks an impossible one.

HoweverSammy is determined to prove that he doesn’t need his father’s support to succeed and there is nothing he can do to stop him from achieving his dream.

Sammy works long hours as a kitchen-hand in a local restaurant where the only perks are the occasional free meal & the cute floor manager Jess.

With his gruelling schedule at the Academy and a part-time job Sammy soon finds himself eventually losing sight of the reason why it’s so important to keep up his dance training.

When Sammy fails the mid-semester assessments he’s left with no choice but to confront his father again and their relationship comes to
a dramatic head.

School life isn’t a picnic either.There’s the aftermath of what happened last year when he found himself attracted to his roommate Christian.

Those feelings may have passed yet they certainly
raised some awkward questions. Is he attracted to guys or was that stuff with Christian a one-time thing?

Does he want to be them rather than be with them? And what does it mean if he’s attracted to girls as well?

Lately Sammy has become a chick magnet dating more girls than he ever thought possible but he can’t get over the nagging sense that weird
feeling is once more going to rear its head.




Abigail begins Second Year trying hard to be a whole new much friendlier person. Her theory is that being the bitch didn’t work last year so she may as well try a different tactic.

But before Second Year has even started Abigail has embarrassed herself with Sammy and discovered that the reason he broke up with her was because he had feelings for Christian.

With her ego well and truly bruised, believing that she “turned” her first and only boyfriend gay, Abigail decides she’s done with people. They are annoying and hurtful and she doesn’t need any of them.

The one person Abigail has time for is the new girl, Grace. She’s a stunning dancer and while in the past Abigail would have hated her for this she knows that nothing was gained last year from hating Tara.

Abigail badly wants a best friend and Grace seems to fit the bill even if Grace seems more into partying than watching Ballet DVD’s (Abigail’s
preferred recreation)

No amateur to manipulation Abigail isn’t fooled by Grace for long. She sees through Grace’s charms when Grace effortlessly ingratiates herself
into the group and begins making trouble.

Abigail warns Tara not to let her get too close but Tara chooses to ignore this advice thinking that Abigail must be up to her old tricks trying to oust the best new dancer.

Abigail is left with no choice but to stay quiet and watch Grace closely not trusting her one inch. A silent war begins between the two girls and for the first time ever Abigail recognises that she’s met her match.




It’s been a momentous twelve months for Christian Reed. He began First Year under the duress of a bail condition and left it having found the
place where he most belonged.

Bit-by-bit he learnt to trust people and most importantly, he’s started to accept that good things can happen to him.

He returns to the Academy happy centred and
very much looking forward to getting back into his dance training.

He starts to seem dissatisfied by everything and increasingly concerned Tara goes one step too far and meddles in Christian’s family life.

There's a rift that has to be healed in order for any of them to be truly happy again.




After turning down a contract with the National Ballet Company in favour of choreographing overseas Ethan graduated from Third Year with lots of plans but no firm prospects.

His father Sebastian, has a six month residency choreographing three new ballets for the Company and when he offers Ethan the job as his assistant Ethan decided that he had to shelve his ego long enough to learn as much from him as he can.

However, Ethan was right, this is an exercise in humility. He returns to the dance centre on a much lower rung than when he left, he’s no longer the star of the Academy and he’s not technically part of the Company.

While Ethan’s peers are performing in the corps de ballet, he has chosen a very different path by deciding to go behind the scenes.

Whether or not this was a good move remains to be seen. Ethan basically asked Tara to get back together at the end of last year.




Grace is an Australian girl who has been studying at the Royal Ballet School in London for the last few years.

As she looks around at the Academy one thing is patently clear if she’s going to stay in the colonies she’s going to need to shake things up.

The moment Grace enters the studio everyone can see that the barre for excellence has been raised.

Born with near perfect proportions for classical ballet she’s been training at the right schools from a very young age.

Although “training” is the wrong word for Grace; it all comes so easily that it doesn’t seem like
work.

A one-in-a-million specimen you’d want to hate Grace if you didn’t fall so completely under her spell.

Despite her talent she’s not a Betty Bunhead. Sure she’ll charm the teachers particularly her godmother Miss Raine who was an old friend of her mother’s but that’s just to make her life easier.

Grace makes up stories so much it can be hard to
tell what is true and what isn’t; however, she's always fun to be around.

Grace’s mother died when she was eight. Grace’s father married another woman one month after his wife’s death.

His wife tally now comes to four and Grace suspects he has an eye out for wife number five.

Grace started dancing because her father found it amusing and he has always been proud to have a ballerina for a daughter.

She dances not because of any great driving passion but because she’s very, very good
at it and other people are not.

Grace enjoys both being good at things and being better than people who want it desperately. Grace’s mind runs at a thousand miles a minute.

She’s clever with words but her real interest is in observing human behaviour what makes people tick how to read between the lines, how to figure out what secrets they’re keeping
and their deepest darkest fears.

Bored easily Grace knows the only way to keep herself truly stimulated is by playing mind games with people.

It annoys her when it’s too easy yes she’s a cat with a mouse and takes pleasure from watching the havoc she creates.



Benjamin Tickle is a breath of fresh air at the Academy. He’s like a puppy boundless energy a short attention span and the potential to lick you
if he likes you enough.

Ben could be considered a normal Aussie male cheeky,scruffy and more than slightly hopeless. He loves his cricket and footie as much as he loves his ballet.

He’s also blessed with a huge talent
for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.

This doesn’t stop him from talking far from it and one of his real charms is that he’ll try to make friends with anyone and usually succeeds.

Ben was accepted into the Academy last year but chose to defer. As we’ll find out later he was under doctors’ orders to do so.

He begins this semester as part of the First Year class but it quickly becomes apparent that he’s much more advanced than the other students.

They soon accelerate him to Second Year where he joins the rest of the gang. Fresh and cute he attracts more than his fair share of female interest.

But as boyfriend material he’s somewhat of an acquired taste his complete lack of tact is at odds with the generally sensitive ballet-bots surrounding him.

At first Ben has quite the crush on Kat but in the long run after some toing and froing it’s Tara who steals his heart.

While relaxed about almost everything Ben is intense about his dance training. He pushes
himself every day determined to make the most of his natural talent.

Ben is hard on his body harder than most students and sometimes needs to be told that it’s time to stop.

In addition to ballet he’s skilled in ballroom and acrobatics he’s also an excellent tap dancer.