EDMONTON — As he took his bows with Alberta Ballet last weekend, Garrett Groat was pretty sure he could hear someone in the Jubilee Auditorium screaming.

“We were all screaming,” confirms his mother, Carol.

That’s what happens when you’re the hometown boy.

After two years of intensive study at American Ballet Theatre’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School in New York City, Groat came home last summer to join Alberta Ballet as an apprentice dancer.

He’s quickly becoming a rising star. The 19-year-old has already performed in several shows this season as an understudy. In the fall, he will officially become a full-fledged member of the corps — a significant jump in a company where dancers often apprentice for two or three years.

“Garrett’s gone straight up so that’s a sign of his maturity and his technical excellence,” says ballet master Edmund Stripe.

“I see a very, very promising career,” he adds.

Not only is Groat well-trained and keen to improve his technique, says Stripe, the statuesque six-foot-one dancer has a certain “it” factor, a commanding presence on stage. “He looks very princely, actually. I can see him being good prince material in a few years time.”

It’s a good thing, then, that he’s used to wearing tights.

Groat was 10 when he first donned hosiery in an introduction to ballet at Vimy Ridge Academy.

The experience was so traumatic, he says he almost quit dancing altogether.

By then, Groat, who was home-schooled, was dancing six days a week. He started with tap and jazz at the age of six, then added Ukrainian to the mix. To round out his training, teachers pushed him to take on ballet, which he officially added to his repertoire — alongside hip-hop and voice lessons — when he was 14.

“When I first started ballet I’m going to be honest and say I hated it,” he says. “I thought it was girlie.”

But he was a natural, acing his first big ballet exam. “I think that was kind of the indication that, ‘Well I may not like this that much but I’m kinda good at it.’ ”

Still, he dreamt not of ballet but dancing contemporary or hip-hop, and training at Juilliard. He even considered trying his luck as a dancer in Hollywood. But a teacher warned him that if he turned his back on ballet, he might never get another chance to do it.

A $5,000 scholarship to study with the American Ballet Theatre sealed the deal and at 17, Groat took the leap.

The Alberta Ballet’s final production of the year is Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, a new ballet inspired by and featuring the music of Sarah McLachlan. Last month, as Alberta Ballet artistic director Jean Grand-Maitre worked on the show’s choreography, he explained to his dancers that the ballet was about “the suffering that gets you to the grace.”

Groat’s first year in New York was the suffering. After months with one teacher who was particularly tough — “he would swear at me, he would call me stupid, he would just beat me to a pulp, like verbally” — Groat felt like he was done with ballet, wasting his time.

Back in Edmonton for the summer, he started up classes again with an old ballet teacher. Seeing that Groat had improved dramatically, she convinced him to give New York another year.

“She lit the fire again,” says Groat, who went back to school determined to prove his father’s theory that if you work hard, you can achieve anything.

Groat’s second year in New York was the grace. “You go through trials and then you become better through your trials,” he says. “I went back to New York and had an amazing year.”

It was so amazing, he didn’t think he’d come back to Alberta. But Alberta Ballet gave him a generous offer — many times more generous than some of the American companies he also auditioned for — and Groat now dances with some of the same people he has long admired.

“I grew up watching Kelley McKinlay,” he says. “When I was probably 16, when I actually started reallydoing ballet, I was looking at him like, ‘Wow, this guy’s so amazing.’ ”

Along with McKinlay, Victoria Lane Green and Galien Johnston, Groat now belongs to an exclusive club of Alberta Ballet dancers who hail from the capital region. Although he’s now based in Calgary with the company, Groat still comes homeevery two weeks to go to church with his family and see his girlfriend.

Last weekend, he returned for a two-night run of Serenade and Vigil of Angels, in which he shared the role of one of the angels with veteran dancer Blair Puente.

“I’m thrilled to have him at home,” says his mom Carol, whose Mill Woods home is filled with dozens of dance trophies, plaques and medals. “Every time he steps on stage, it’s like ‘Ahh!’ That’s my baby, you know what I mean?”

The Groats come to almost every performance, bringing along aunts, friends and old dance teachers.

Paradoxically, coming home to Alberta has accelerated his career, says Groat. He knows dancers who have joined bigger companies in San Francisco and Boston — “and they don’t dance,” he says. Here, Groat has danced solo and filled challenging roles that demand athleticism.

“I’m always aspiring for something more and something bigger,” he says, “but it’s definitely good to still be here.”

jfong@edmontonjournal.com