Garry Stocks is a Melbourne-based tap dance artist. Whether it be teaching, performing, or creating new work, he welcomes them equally with passion, dedication, and artistic freedom. His dance journey began in the little country town of Bathurst in New South Wales, and since then he has spent his life surrounded by dance. Initially, he was drawn to the fascinating world of tap dance and began his training as a 7-year-old with the Les Griffiths Tap Dancing Syllabus. As the years went on, he began exploring any style of dance he could participate in, and ballet became a new challenge and artistic expression he wanted to explore to its fullest. He decided to move to Melbourne at the age of 15 to study at The Australian Ballet School and after graduating, in 2005 he joined The Australian Ballet, under the direction of David McAllister AC. Garry has performed on iconic stages all around the world, including New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo, Shanghai and Auckland, as well as home stages such as the Sydney Opera House and Melbourne's State Theatre. After 10 years performing with The Australian Ballet, he has returned to his first dance style in which he now finds himself focused on bringing deep and impactful percussive dance work to the stage and educating the next generation of passionate artists.

 

​His career with The Australian Ballet allowed him to dance both modern and classical works by some of the world’s leading choreographers such as Graeme Murphy AO, Jiri Kylian, Alexei Ratmansky, Krzysztof Pastor, Rudolf Nureyev, Stanton Welch, John Cranko and Kenneth Macmillan. 

He has seen firsthand how the movement of the human body can convey powerful emotions to an audience. By combining his technical proficiency in tap, classical and contemporary dance, he is exploring how this primarily auditory art form can also be an aesthetically powerful and moving storytelling medium.  

 

As a teacher he currently runs weekly tap classes from his studio within the NICA campus in Prahran, Melbourne, and has also teaches for The Tap Project, Patricks School of the Arts, and Michelle Slater Performing Arts. He has been a faculty member at the Australian Tap Dance Festival since 2019, teaching various Masterclass and undertaking an Advanced residency in 2022.  He has created and performed two new successful solo works for both festival gala shows in 2022 and has collaborated and performed with some of Australia's most well-renowned and respected tap dance artists. ​

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He is passionate about pushing the boundaries of what we know as tap dance today and challenging the preconceptions of this art form by collaborating and exploring the unlimited possibilities of music and movement. This African American art has been passed down through the generations and he feels honoured to be able to share in this transformative percussive art.

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Garry lives in Melbourne with his wife Jade who is a Senior Artist of The Australian Ballet, and their two miniature dachshunds, Bentley and Winter.

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