This week, I taught my last dance class.
Me, performing, aged 28I started teaching as an off-sider to Miss Joan Ashton in Liverpool, NSW, shortly before my fifteenth birthday, so I have taught ballet and related genres for over sixty years. I haven’t taught non-stop, of course – I took time out from teaching to perform in my early twenties, but thereafter I taught whenever I could, household tasks and child-rearing duties permitting. I have taught in three Australian states and in Auckland, New Zealand. Ballet has long been my first love, and I hope I have imparted that devotion to many of my students. As far as I know, none of them became professional dancers or teachers, but I know many of them derived great benefit from their dance training. It is a wonderful thing to see shy adolescents blossom once they start to realise the joy of performing and the fitness benefits to be had from ballet training.
So what shall I do instead? I shall attend dance and exercise classes for elderly folk, and I am not averse to teaching casually if asked. And, of course, I hope to write more – book three of The Talismans is just starting to take shape, but I need to put in many more hours of thinking and typing before it goes to press. So maybe I haven’t retired – I’ve just switched to a different stream!
Any funny stories to tell about my dancing life? Well, one certainly comes to mind. Once, when conducting a pas de deux class, I was teaching the boys to lift their partners, then turn around and put the girls down gently. That being accomplished, I started to move on by saying, ‘All right, gentlemen, when you have finished doing the girls over…’
The students were almost rolling on the floor with laughter, and I’m not sure we ever did finish that dance.