Brett Chynoweth, Guest Principal, The Nutcracker 2018, was born in Melbourne. At age five, he began training at a local ballet school. He soon moved to the Australian Ballet School, where he received, among other awards, the Dr HC (Nuggett) Coombes Travelling Scholarship, which enabled him to train in New York and Toronto. He graduated from the Australian Ballet School with honours and joined the Australian Ballet at the beginning of 2009; he was promoted to principal artist on stage at the end of the 2018 season in his home town of Melbourne. Since joining Australian Ballet, Brett has performed a variety of classical and contemporary works by choreographers such as Acosta, Duato, Harbour, Kylián, McGregor, Murphy and Ratmansky, and his principal roles include works by some of the greats - Ashton, Balanchine, Lifar, MacMillan, Wheeldon and Wright.