The Story Of Sean Kiley

 

The Dancing Dream

As a boy growing up in Sydney, Sean Kiley a former ballet dancer, always had a passion for animals and dancing, no matter where he went wildlife creatures would find him, it became a running joke within his family. 

 

‘’My mum had taken a bag of groceries in a minute later she found me in the middle of a path with like a foot long blue tongue lizard sitting on my shoulder I think that sort of started it.’’

 

However his heart lead him to ballet when he learnt he had a skill for it and graduated from the Australian Ballet Company, which lead him to gaining a position in the company. 

 

‘’A year before joining the company I sort of thought it’d be a waste if I don’t pursue this at some form of professional capacity. So, I uh decided I wanted to do that and then got the position.’’

 

He trained hard throughout his dancing career and eventually those long tiring rehearsals began to not be as draining, yet more so second nature.

 

Although ballet as Sean puts it, like any other sport it has a ‘’expiry date’’ when your body physically can’t do it anymore. So once he began to have issues with his knees a few years after being with the company, he decided his body had enough of professional dancing and changed his career path.

 

‘’It got to a point like where if I was sitting down for 15min and standing up id be in pain or going up or down stairs or just doing the barest minimum of my job Id be in pain. And that was really hard because I kept thinking to myself oh I’m 22, 23 I cant go upstairs, I’m healthy otherwise I should be so healthy.’’ He explained

 

That’s how he got to where he is today, which is being currently enrolled at Latrobe University studying a Bachelor of Animal and Veterinary Bioscience.

 

‘’I always knew after I stopped dancing I wanted to do something with animals I just wasn’t sure what and so when I stopped and Covid happened, I started looking at my options more and more.’’ He said.

 

Sean loves to travel and spent some time in Africa doing hands on work with lions. Unfortunately, with Covid restrictions this has made it difficult for Sean to travel overseas and adventure, however he has made plans to travel with friends in the time being. 

 

Sean is very family and friend orientated, claiming they’re the most important things in his life as of now which is why he wants to share these travel experiences with them.

 

 

‘’Id travel around Australia a bit so yeah in the immediate future its finish the semester and drive up to Queensland with a few friends.’’

 

Sean said that his family had always been majorly supportive of what he wanted to do and would help him reach his goals, they would always encourage him to try new things even if they didn’t work out, to just try them anyways.

 

When speaking about the close future and what Sean wanted to do aside from travel, he brought up his passion for the art of dance and that even though it isn’t his career anymore, he still likes to dance for fun.

 

‘’I want to get more into dancing not necessarily ballet um but yeah like id love to do more of hip hop because it’s a passion.’’

 

As you can tell dancing has really shaped the person Sean is today and it all started from Mikhail Baryshnikov, his biggest idol who got his fascination with the art started.

 

‘’I watched several recordings of him when I was younger…. I was around 8, 9 or 10 and I just remember thinking like this is ridiculously and so impressive and I stared looking up more and more, especially when I started getting into ballet and after that I just remembered this one guy is amazing.’’

 

Although apart from being known as the dancer amongst his family of lawyers he is also known as a massive bookworm, which he likes to thank his sister for, reading 300 books a year showing his studious side.

 

When Sean finishes his studies at Latrobe he wants to work with larger animals again like he did in Africa.

 

‘’The end goal is working with larger animals, but 5 years from now I would actually like to start doing biology conservation stuff especially in Australia we have a lot of endangered species, so I’d love to do some hands on work out in the actual bush doing some conservation.’’