Our Teachers & Mentors:
Hunger For Dance prides itself on providing quality dance education, driven by quality teachers. The staff at HFD are amongst the highest qualified and industry experienced in their field.
Our teachers are carefully selected for their qualifications, experience and talent as well as what they can offer our students. We aim to provide not only the correct knowledge and skills but also passion in our studios.
Our student teachers are also taught and guided through the appropriate channels to ensure they are confident and well equipped to teach and deliver the Hunger For Dance standard.
All our teachers have valid WWCC’s (Working with Children Checks) and knowledge in first aid.
Our Director
About Peta
Peta didn’t take her first dance class until she was 14, late by most standards, but it fulfilled her grandmother’s dream, and she never looked back. She was soon assisting in classes and then teaching her own, and found she loved teaching every bit as much as performing.
After school she completed a Diploma of Dance Teaching and Management and taught full time. The performance bug then took her back to full-time training at Dance World, and on to the foundation year of Todd Patrick’s now highly regarded Patrick Studios Australia. A commercial career followed in Australia and overseas: corporate events, live shows for music artists, music videos, television and cruise ships. When an injury brought her home early from a cruise contract, she realised how much she’d missed teaching and returned to it full time.
In December 2013 Peta opened Hunger For Dance. A couple of years in, she noticed there were very few proper dance classes for children with additional needs, and much of what did exist was pitched well below what those children could do. She created her own specialised dance and movement programs. They’re genuinely engaging, build real dance skills alongside transferable life skills, and can work hand in hand with a child’s therapies where needed. It’s an area she knows well: through her second business, I’mMEasurAble, Peta also works as a therapy assistant with autistic children.
Peta also created her own toddler and preschool programs from the ground up, drawing on her extensive knowledge of dance and of the transferable life skills that set young children up for everything that follows. That same intention now runs through everything at Hunger For Dance: every program is built on dance, and every one is designed so that all children take skills with them beyond the studio. The studio has since won back-to-back Australasian Dance Education Awards for Inclusivity and Diversity, along with an award for Team Culture.
With more than 25 years of teaching experience, Peta has also worked as a dance examiner and competition adjudicator, and shares her approach with the wider industry by presenting at youth summits and running workshops for dance teachers. Peta builds her students up to be resilient and to reach for their goals and dreams, whatever they may be. They’ve gone on to full-time training, scholarships including AMDA in New York City, performing careers and teaching careers of their own. Just as many have become NICU nurses, school teachers, architects and leaders of major firms. Peta is equally proud of all of them, because dance gave each of them confidence and a sense of belonging that they carry into whatever comes next.
“There’s no substitute for knowing each student as an individual. Some of my students have gone on to perform, and some have become nurses, teachers and architects. I’m equally proud of every one of them.”