WATCH: From Lake Country to London’s West End, local performer shines

• She has training in dance and aerial skills
• Started performing with the play in October last year
• On a one-year contract with the company

After travelling to the UK in 2020, a local dancer was inspired to move there where she landed one of the biggest gigs in London’s West End.

Katrina Lopes plays a Dementor in the award-winning play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. A Dementor is a gliding, wraithlike dark creature, widely considered to be one of the foulest in the wizarding world.

“The dementor stuff is all flying around in the air, so I don’t really touch the stage,” Lopes told Kelowna10 from London’s West End during a dinner break between performances.

“One of the dementors goes into the audience and up all four levels of the [Palace Theatre], which is pretty cool, and I’ve gotten to do that a couple times.”

This is the first full-time performing job Lopes has landed and she’s thankful to be able to live in London and work in theatre.

Lopes went to the Lake Country School of Dance before moving to Vancouver, where she danced at The Source Dance Company and learned aerial skills at the Vancouver Circus School.

She moved to London last April after getting a work visa, and for the first few months, she reached out to agencies until she found someone to represent her.

“I just moved blindly essentially; I didn’t have any job over here,” Lopes said.

She worked at a restaurant until one day, her agent at the time, found the Harry Potter gig, which matched her skillset perfectly.

“I had video proof of my silk skills, as well as my movement dancing,” she explained.

After an audition and an interview, Lopes got the job and started performing in October. She said it was nerve racking to move across the world during the pandemic, but it paid off in the end.

“If I didn’t move in the pandemic when I had, I wouldn’t have had this audition and job,” she said.

For Lopes, there’s nothing quite like live theatre and she’s glad to be able to perform in front of audiences again.

“I like how an audience can come in for a few hours, and regardless of what’s happening in the world, [they] can forget about it and just enjoy the show that’s onstage,” Lopes explained.

Her advice for aspiring performers is to dedicate time and commitment to whatever medium they enjoy and not worry about the income or recognition.

“You can’t necessarily just wait for someone to hand you anything. You kind of just commit to the [art] and things start to fall in place after,” Lopes said.

She will be in her role until October 2022. Lopes hopes to get another work visa so she can stay overseas for a bit longer as she said she’s not ready to come home yet.

More information on the play can be found here.