Ella Havelka

Ella Havelka (born 1989) is an Australian ballet dancer who is the first Indigenous person to join The Australian Ballet.

Early life Havelka was born in Dubbo, New South Wales, and is a descendant of the Wiradjuri people. She was raised by a single mother. At age 15, Havelka and her mother moved to Melbourne to train at the Australian Ballet School and graduated in 2007. Therefore, in 2009, she joined Bangarra Dance Theatre, an Indigenous Australian contemporary dance company, and made her debut with Fire – A Retrospective, and continued to perform in the company's other productions. In 2019, she returned to Bangarra as a guest for its 30th anniversary.

Havelka was the subject of the documentary film Ella, which premiered at the Melbourne International Film Festival in 2016.

Outside of dancing, Havelka learnt weaving when a production required her to weave her own mat; she later started making and selling Aboriginal woven baskets to raise funds for Oxfam Australia. She also makes jewellery and linocuts.

Awards Havelka won the Deadly Award dancer of the year in 2013 and the Women of Style Award in 2017.