When Arnon Herring flew from Tel Aviv to London with his father to audition for the Royal Ballet School, you could say it was a case of life imitating art.

Just like the eponymous hero in Billy Elliot, played by Herring in the original Israeli production of the stage musical, he was leaving home to train at one of the best ballet schools in the world.

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Big break: Herring playing Billy Elliot in the Israeli production of the stage musical (Or Danon, Ash)

Last summer, Herring became the first Israeli student to graduate from the Royal Ballet School and now he has just started dancing with the Cape Town City Ballet.
Still just 20, he has come a long way since he took his first steps as a dancer seven years ago.

He grew up in Shoham, a small town in central Israel. “I was an insecure and very shy boy who did lots of boyish sports like basketball, football, judo and swimming,” he says.

Then one day the musical Cats came to Israel and he asked his mother if they could go for his birthday. “It was just magical, a life-changing day that will stay with me for ever,” he recalls.

“We left the theatre and I told my mum I thought I wanted to be a dancer. I asked her to sign me up for a ballet class.”

Thirteen is quite old to start ballet, but a few weeks after his lessons had begun Herring loved it so much that when he heard auditions were taking place for the Israeli production of Billy Elliot, he put himself forward.

“There was more than a month of auditioning, of meetings with the director, the producers before I was told I had the role.

“I was completely shocked. I had only been dancing for a few weeks and had somehow landed the biggest ballet part a boy could wish for.”

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The young Arnon Herring

The director told him he needed to work on his technique and stamina. “I had a month’s training with him and other choreographers and teachers before the opening night. Looking back, I don’t know how I did it. It was insanely challenging for a young boy.”
On the opening night, Rose Kassel, one of Israel’s top ballet teachers, was in the audience.

She took Herring under her wing, teaching him for the next two years of the Billy Elliot run.

During that time, Herring was awarded third prize in the 2017 Korean International Ballet Competition, and one of the judges suggested he audition for the Royal Ballet School.
“It was a horrible audition for me,” he says.

“I was very stressed and not in my comfort zone at all. I felt very lucky to get a ‘yes’.”

When he joined the school in Year 11, he had next to no English. “I was taught the language in Israel, but I wasn’t a serious student. My focus was sport and then ballet and being with my friends. On my very first day at the ballet school, they had to teach me my ABC.

“At the time I regretted not having paid more attention, but now I’m actually more at home speaking English than I am Hebrew.” Back then, Herring was also very homesick.

“I felt the loneliest person in the world. I come from a very loving and close family, and leaving them at the age of 15 was very hard. And it took me some time to get used to British culture — and British food!

“I kept asking myself why I was doing this to myself. I’d had a wonderful life in Israel. Was I in the right place?”

Be he stayed put. “I told myself I couldn’t quit, that I’d feel like a failure if I did. Just keep going, I said.”

The one upside of feeling homesick was that it brought him closer to his Jewish roots.
“I started lighting candles on Shabbat, and baking challah. I wanted to be in touch with my people, my culture, with Israel.”

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Arnon Herring

Meanwhile, he didn’t experience any antisemitism at the Royal Ballet School. Rather, they were “very curious about Israel.” he says.

Being an Israeli in the wider city wasn’t always easy, though. On two occasions he was verbally abused on the London Underground for reading books in Hebrew. “It was a bit scary. For a short time, I felt it was maybe unsafe for me to be on the Tube and read my mother tongue.”

But life went on and when he entered his second year, life in the British capital became everything he wanted.

“I was in the Upper School, which is opposite the Royal Opera House and did classes with the Royal Ballet Company. I got to experience company life and to learn from some of the biggest names in ballet.”

One of them was the Royal Ballet’s principal dancer Steven McRae, an Australian who, like Herring, is a redhead. “He’s actually one of the reasons I stuck with the dancing,” he says.

“Although I loved ballet from the get-go, there was a period in Israel, where classical dance is not big, when I was scared of pursuing it as a career. Could I achieve what I wanted? I saw Steven, a ginger classical dancer, and he sort of told me I could.”

The rest, you could say, is history in the making. After graduation, he was offered a contract at the Cape Town City Ballet. “It’s not the biggest company, but that hopefully means I’ll have more opportunity to appear on stage.”