Jasmin Durham was three years old when she first started dancing in Canberra.
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Now a lead dancer with The Australian Ballet - a role known as known as a coryphee - Durham's says the capital was where her love of ballet and dedication to becoming a professional dancer was born.
"I would do things like the Canberra Eisteddfod. That was probably the moment I realised I want to do it professionally because the performance side of it was what I really loved," Durham says.
"I think I was nine, when I first got to do a ballet competition and do a solo on stage, and that's when it really hit me."
Now, the professional ballet dancer is nominated for the most prestigious prize in Australian ballet, the Telstra Ballet Dancer Awards. The award is one of the longest-running arts awards in the country and has celebrated ballet talent for almost two decades.
Durham is one of six dancers nominated, with the winner announced when The Australian Ballet returns to the stage for the first time in a year in April.
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"It means a lot to me, especially after everything we've been through recently," she says.
"I've been in the company for a while now so for me, it means that I've really carved to place for myself in the company and that my contributions are admired. And to be acknowledged by your peers as about as good as it gets."
It's been a long road for Durham where she is today - not in the least because she has effectively been training for her career since she was three.
But the dancer says there was never any question that she would be a professional dancer. Not because she was a natural, but because she never gave herself any other option.
"I don't have the best natural facility for ballet. I've never felt like a front runner and I had to audition for the Australian Ballet School four times," Durham says.
"I've had to deal with a lot of setbacks in my journey to become a dancer. I've always had tenacity and passion for dancing, which I think is what carried me through."
And the past 12 months have only made the dancer stronger. COVID and the lockdowns it imposed, allowed Durham to take a step back from the daily rehearsals and focus on her mental health.
"For me, it was a blessing in disguise. I feel awful for saying that because I know freelance dancers have really struggled in this time. But for me, it was honestly the best thing that could have happened," she says.
"At The Australian Ballet you keep going and going. You can't stop, you don't have time to really deal with things and you just need to be OK all the time.
"I've never been injured and had a long period of time off to really reflect. So in this time, I've realised how much I compare myself to other dancers and how much that affects how I work and how I focus.
"In the past 12 months, I've learned to trust myself. I learned to work for myself and not prove myself to others. I realised it's more important how I view myself and not how other people view me. It's honestly been the biggest improvement in my dancing."