From the Royal Ballet School to Rewriting the Rulebook

Seven years of training at the Royal Ballet School. A professional dance career spanning three continents. Now channelled into teaching ballet the way it should've been taught all along.

Martin Howland is a former principal dancer, current ballet teacher, and founder of HowlyBallet. Raised in Brighouse, West Yorkshire, he started dancing at the Elwyn School of Dance before auditioning successfully for the Royal Ballet School at 11, training there for seven years across the lower and upper schools. His first professional contract took him to Düsseldorf with Deutsche Oper am Rhein, followed by contracts in France, a return home with London City Ballet, a turn as Slavemaster in Cameron Mackintosh's Phantom of the Opera, and three years with K-Ballet in Japan. From there he worked as a guest principal dancer across Japan, Europe, and Cape Town, South Africa, before bringing the curtain down on performing and coming home to the UK.

Today, alongside HowlyBallet, Martin is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Project Resurgence CIC in Bradford — a hub for elite associate ballet training and outreach work, and where his focus sits now. Teaching found him before his performing career had even ended, working with the lead performers of the West End's Billy Elliot and training the next generation through to their own show-ready standard. In 2011 he co-founded Renaissance Arts and the Scholars in Leeds, running it for thirteen years, before two years at Addict Dance Academy.

That experience has taken dancers he's coached — starting with the original West End cast of Billy Elliot — into West End and touring contracts, ballet companies, and stages worldwide, alongside adults who simply wanted to dance well and found they could.