{"id":64353,"date":"2026-08-03T21:48:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T21:48:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/64353\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T21:48:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T21:48:17","slug":"four-girls-plucked-from-suburban-dance-school-to-perform-in-anastasia-the-musical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/64353\/","title":{"rendered":"Four girls plucked from suburban dance school to perform in Anastasia the musical"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aria Piteo has just landed the biggest role of her young life and will be ready to take one big deep breath before the curtain goes up.<\/p>\n

The 10-year-old will make her professional theatre debut in the Anastasia musical during its Adelaide season.<\/p>\n

Aria is one of four girls hand-picked to play the role of Little Anastasia and remarkably they all come from the Norwood-based Barbara Jayne Dance Centre.<\/p>\n

“I do love it, but I also get really nervous and I’m like, ‘You can do it Ari, yes, you can do it,'” Piteo said.\"A<\/p>\n

Aria Piteo says she loves performing. (ABC News: Steve Opie)<\/p>\n

“I love doing it because I love to express myself and love performing in front of everyone and showing what I can really do,” she said.<\/p>\n

Audrey Burnett, 11, knows exactly how Piteo feels.<\/p>\n

“I definitely think I’ll get nervous, but I’ll also be like, ‘It’s okay you got this, you got chosen for a reason,'” she said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Audrey Burnett says she gets nervous before a big performance. (ABC News: Steve Opie)<\/p>\n

The girls had to get through three searching rounds of auditions against dozens of other hopefuls.<\/p>\n

“I didn’t think I was going to get it because there were so many good people,” Daisy Goodall, 10, said.<\/p>\n

A tight bond helped the quartet survive each cut.<\/p>\n

“They’re just like family to me, they’re like my bestest friends,” Burnett said.<\/p>\n

“It’s just great to have them and they’ll always support me, even if they’re nervous, they make me feel calm.”<\/p>\n

Resilient performers\u00a0<\/p>\n

Barbara Komazec has seen it all while running the Barbara Jayne Dance Centre for 51 years.<\/p>\n

She said all the girls selected to perform have singing, dancing and acting skills, but it would take much more if they want to make a living on the stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“They’ve got to have some talent, they’ve got to have resilience because they get the knocks all the time,” Ms Komazec said.<\/p>\n

“They’ve got to be able to get knocked back and then get back up and try again.”\"A<\/p>\n

Barbara Komazec says the girls have put a lot of hours into preparing for the show. (ABC News: Steve Opie)<\/p>\n

Isla Bahrami is the youngest of the girls at just nine years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said she was stunned when she received the phone call about getting the role.<\/p>\n

“I was excited, shocked at the same time,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I found out in the car with my cousin and he was screaming as well, so basically it was just a screaming car, really.”\"A<\/p>\n

Isla Bahrami is the youngest of the girls performing in Anastasia. (ABC News: Steve Opie)<\/p>\n

On the eve of show rehearsals, she was looking forward to performing a song with one of the adult cast members.<\/p>\n

“I’m singing with a lady called Nancy I’m pretty sure,” she said.<\/p>\n

‘Nancy’ is actually Australian theatre icon Nancye Hayes AM, who stars as the Dowager Empress.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/p>\n

Australian theatre icon Nancye Hayes AM will star in the musical. (Supplied: Jeff Busby)<\/p>\n

“They will learn so much, they really will,” Barbara Komazec said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Working with a musical director; when they’re doing the singing, working with the choreographer, the director.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“They will learn so much and plus being in the environment with professionals.”<\/p>\n

But the opportunity hasn’t come without years of grind, according to Burnett.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We work so hard, we do so many lessons a week and it’s still so fun, but there’s a lot of dedication,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While she was ready to strut her stuff in Anastasia, she said she was a little uneasy about her mum being in the audience.<\/p>\n

“My mum gets extremely nervous, she like freaks out and she makes me nervous, so sometimes I’m a little bit, ‘Oh, calm down’,” Burnett said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The cast for Anastasia also includes Georgina Hopson and Rhonda Burchmore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aria Piteo has just landed the biggest role of her young life and will be ready to take…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[395,6701,78536,78535,78539,29963,13533,78538,2221,4669,78537,35235,1868,1162],"class_list":["post-64353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-adelaide","tag-adelaide","tag-adelaide-festival-centre","tag-anastasia","tag-auditions","tag-barbara-jayne-dance-centre","tag-barbara-komazec","tag-dance","tag-georgina-hopson","tag-music","tag-musical-theatre","tag-nancye-hayes","tag-rhonda-burchmore","tag-stage","tag-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}