Ravi Cannonier-Watson will teach ballet and contemporary dance at schools across the island next week.

He hopes his lessons will especially encourage students with an eye on a professional career.

The 18-year-old remembers just how tough it was for him before he left Bermuda at the age of 11 to study at Royal Ballet School in London.

“When I first started dancing, I was part of a small handful of boys who were actually dancing at the time. And I thought it was really strange because, obviously, it wasn't that many and when I went to the UK, there were hundreds.”

On each trip home he considered how he could “kind of change that” but there never seemed to be enough time until now.

“I want to hopefully get more boys dancing in Bermuda. I nearly fell into the, I guess the stereotype if you will of going towards the more seemingly masculine things like sports. Boys want to be footballers, not many want to be dancers. So I guess, for me, it’s to try and find those few individuals that don't actually want to follow what everyone else is doing.

“When I first started I felt incredibly isolated. I maybe even doubted myself at the time: should I actually even be doing this because I don't see many people like me around me. But obviously pushed through that and saw that it was a completely different world on the other side.”

In September, Ravi will enter his final year at Royal Ballet School. He is offering lessons at United Dance Productions for a week, beginning July 21 and is teaching open classes at Jackson’s School of Performing Arts and Padma, the school led by his mother, Sophia Cannonier.

“I've had some of the best teachers and I've had the experience of performing for large audiences and I've been in situations where I've learnt things that I feel are valuable to pass on to the younger generation,” he said.

“In Bermuda there's not a lot of opportunity for these young dancers to go abroad unless they do so themselves or they go to the latest summer intensives or they go to schools. But I just feel in Bermuda it can be sometimes very constricted in terms of that and I feel if I was to come in, I could bring some of my experience and teachings to I guess, open their minds to what is out there. And I guess, getting them to set their sights on their own futures and maybe leaving the island to pursue dance.”

In celebration of the end of the school year, Ravi is performing with the Royal Ballet School at the Royal Opera House and The Opera Holland Park.

“There’s an Upper School show, which is mainly the Upper School with little excerpts from the White Lodge [junior school] shows and then there's a White Lodge show which has excerpts from the Upper School show in that. But what we've basically been working on and finally got a chance to perform for a public audience is a handful of pieces. We have an all boys’ piece called Fast Blue, which is choreographed by Mikaela Polley. It’s a killer of a piece.

“But aside from the men's piece, the girls have been working on and got to perform the dream scene from Don Quixote and fortunately I was chosen to perform the role of Don Quixote, the old man with the moustache, the beard, the helmet. I had to learn how to glue a beard on to my face, do some very intense make-up to make myself look old. So that was a lot of fun. It’s not a dancing role, it's an acting role. It is very different to dancing.”

He managed with help from his ballet teachers and by putting in the effort.

“I feel like I'm actually starting to get a grasp for it. It’s just a completely different way of kind of being on stage. It’s a different way, how you move. You have to try to sell the character and not worry so much about [movement] technique because there is no technique in acting. So it's been a good experience. It's been an eye opener in terms of what dance has to offer because it's obviously not just meaningless movement, there is character on top of it. I feel like when you have such an isolated role that doesn't require a lot of dancing, it kind of leaves you in a very vulnerable position.”

His advice to dancers here is to “keep going in any circumstance”.

“It’s the most important thing I’ve learnt. To keep going, in anything you do. It is so important to not lose heart, to just continue through. You're constantly going to be going through the ups and downs. If you keep pushing through a difficult week to get to a performance and the performance is amazing, it all paid off.

“No one has instructions in their library. So if you try and lay it out – I'm going to do this by this age, I'm going to be this good by this age – you’re kind of setting yourself up for failure because you're putting time limits on everything, you're putting a lot of pressure on yourself. Whereas if you kind of just go with the flow and just see where your career takes you, you’ll be a lot happier.”