Meet Paul Malek: TRANSIT DANCE
Paul Malek
How have Transit’s full-time course offerings evolved and changed over the years?
“This is now our ninth year of operation. In our first two years, we were solely focused on Contemporary Dance and Dance Teacher education. As it has evolved, we have been able to build our own 4000 sqm facility and branch out into various performing arts styles and musical theatre. We run seven courses at the moment that are full-time, including Contemporary Dance, Performing Arts (Jazz) and Musical Theatre diploma courses, along with a thriving High School Academy (year 7 - 12).
We also have our certificate and diploma teacher courses. The community has grown from just sixteen full-time students back in 2015, to 180 now. Even delivering the teachers course, we have an additional 80 teachers now completing their qualifications online, which is an incredible thing for dance education in Australia.”
What does the teacher’s course involve?
“The course involves furthering your knowledge on a variety of Dance Teaching Techniques, Production management, Anatomy & Nutrition, Marketing & Promotion as well as Business skills. Delivered predominantly by Karen Malek, who has been passionately working with teachers for over two decades and is also the recipient of the prestigious Australia Dance Award for services to dance education. What she brings to the course is a wealth of information over her 50-year dance teaching career. We are so passionate about achieving the highest standards of dance teaching, and with our specifically designed courses, we are extremely dedicated to the advancement of dance education in Australia and beyond.”
What sort of dancer thrives and excels at Transit?
”We don’t have just one type of dancer, performer or artist that solely thrives in our environment.
Transit is definitely a place where all emerging artists can find their path. Some notable attributes we look for are a person who is completely open to every opportunity. Someone who is not fearful of their own potential and excited for the challenge. Someone who is kind, and has an undeniably strong work ethic in every moment. At Transit we are all about cultivating a professional environment and strong community based on unified values and approach to the industry. So, a person who really wants to belong to a community and help lift up the people around them during their journey is also a prime candidate for success in our programs.”
When a student finishes up at Transit dance, they are...
”Courageous and creative artists who all have the highest level of professional knowledge and skill to navigate their journey for decades to come.”
With a large intake, how do you ensure an individualised learning experience for your dancers?
”We are blessed to have eight fully equipped dance studios and over fifteen full-time staff members who are there five days a week during all our program delivery. There is a real focus during class to ensure everyone's development is on track with individual feedback. All students also have individual meetings and career plans completed throughout the course. We want to ensure they are all evolving within the areas that they are thriving in as well as being challenged to learn new skills to strengthen their career options moving forward.”
Transit is known for its performances. What is the vision and reason behind offering so many performance opportunities to your students?
”We are definitely a performance-based course. We want to create the next great performers of the world, so the maximisation of performance experience is imperative to the design of all our courses. We want them to be seasoned performers so each course does three - four production seasons a year along with individual performances scattered across their time to achieve this. That can be up to a total of 40 performances a year in some students' cases. We have our own 180-seat facility, so there is always a show on. The students are always around theatre; they are always around lighting design; they are always around costume and production design. There is always something really fantastic happening within the building. Students often put on their own shows also or do their own dance films which is really exciting, and they are just fearless. They are going to auditions with an air of confidence that they are a seasoned professional before they have even left full-time. You can’t recreate the adrenaline that a performance creates unless you are doing a performance live, and they are performing all the time.”
What would you say sets Transit apart from other full-time institutions?
“Performance opportunities first and foremost as explained above. The next thing that really sets Transit apart is our facilities. We have a fully equipped professional gym & pilates studio for our integrated strength programs, and our own professional theatre which allows us to perform consistently throughout the year. On top of this all our students belong to a thriving artistic community where you feel like you are a part of something each and every day. When you leave, you will always remain a part of the Transit Dance community also, which is a beautiful thing and something to be proud of. Finally, we have a really big focus on mental health, and mindfulness, and not just industry skills but life skills. We give the students the tools to be able to manage their downtime, to be able to manage their lives, and motivate themselves every single day. We focus on those skills just as much as their techniques and performance skills.”