There seemed to be about sixty girls in the room, ranging
in age from about ten years or so to some who, like Janice, looked very
grown-up. A feeling of excitement and pride surged through Lesley. All
these girls were going to be, or were hoping to be, dancers. Humility followed
the thought. Would she be able to make the grade? Lesley remembered Madame's
words when she had interviewed her, prior to her acceptance as a pupil.
"I want only enthusiasts in my school; those who feel they must
dance. It is not an easy life to choose and those who think of dancing
as just a pleasant hobby do not interest me at all."
(Constance M. White, The Ballet School Mystery, Hutchison, 1959,
p10)
As a motherless, working-class girl in South London,
my mother had longed to attend her local dancing school. However, her father,
a London bus conductor, could not afford to pay for any outside activities,
and her ambitions had been frustrated. She was determined that we would
have the opportunities which she had missed, and I therefore began dancing
lessons as a small child in the local Women's Institute hall, where I learned
ballet and, for a short time, "tap". Later I went to lessons
in the local Church of England hall, organised by a friend of my mother's,
and by the time that I started High School I was taking lessons at a "proper"
local dancing school, in a purpose-built studio at the back of the teacher's
house.
dan1
In this I needed no prompting by my mother. I was musical,
creative and liked physical exercise, and generally enjoyed the lessons
enormously. I was also fascinated with the romance surrounding dancing;
my imagination fed by books by Noel Streatfield
and the endless ballet stories in comics such as Bunty, Judy,
Mandy and Tammy. The child dancer of fiction was both economically
independent and extraordinarily talented, creating a fantasy of artistic
invulnerability. While I was still at primary school I begged to be sent
to a residential ballet school, although I knew really that it was never
an option financially. Instead, when I was 13 I began lessons at a well-known
dancing school in the seaside town to the south of us, later joined by
my sister. This school had a formidable reputation, with students frequently
going on to residential schools and colleges at the age of sixteen before
becoming professional dancers. Some students went on to the Royal Ballet
School, and in the mid-1970s one old girl was an up-and-coming soloist
with the Royal Ballet.
dan2
The school was owned by a middle-aged woman who bore no
resemblance to the dancing teachers portrayed in ballet stories, being
short, plump and shapeless. However, she was a superb teacher, well-known
in dancing circles across the UK and beyond (she was also a qualified examiner,
and sometimes travelled abroad in this work). Her daughter, who bore a
great physical resemblance to her mother, taught the younger children.
Initially a third teacher shared responsibility for the older students,
but she was dismissed after the head discovered that her husband had been
watching our classes (the implications of this went way over our heads
at the time). This teacher was replaced by a very competent young woman,
who had graduated head of her year from the Royal College of Dancing and
who had the classical dancer's slim build and long hair.
dan3
The school was based in a collection of halls next to
a local church, linked by a common cloakroom where we changed into our
dancing uniforms. We carried these uniforms around in small cases, together
with the necessary deodorants, talcum powder and hair dressing materials
(long hair had to be worn in a bun trimmed with velvet ribbon, short hair
had to be put in a net). In fact, the uniform policy was as strict as the
High School's,
but my attitude to it was completely different. Whereas I regarded the
High School's policy as rigid and inflexible, to me the dancing school's
policy merely reflected the self-discipline required of any dancer or performer.
And while I hated having my straight, brown hair tied back for High School
and longed for a fashionable hair style, at the dancing school it came
into its own as it went "up" easily.
dan4
We wore black, sleeveless leotards for ballet, over pink
nylon tights which were held up by an elasticated jock strap known to us
all as a "tight top". Over our leotards we wore short, black
nylon half-skirts, with black knitted "wrap over" cardigans which
tied behind our backs. Our ballet shoes were made of pink satin, and we
darned the toes to make them last longer and, in the case of pointe shoes,
to prevent us from slipping. For national dancing we removed our ballet
shoes and skirts and put on very full green skirts trimmed with embroidered
tape and black Cuban-heeled shoes; for modern ballet and jazz dancing we
wore coloured leotards with three-quarter length sleeves and matching footless
tights (held up by the ubiquitous "tight top") with bare feet.
As we usually had more than one class on the same day and often ran in
off a late bus or train, we learned to change clothes very quickly.
dan5
For the next few years my life revolved around the dancing
school, which I soon attended for three nights a week after High School
as well as on Saturdays. This meant that I had very long working days,
leaving for the High School train just after 7.30am, then travelling to
the dancing school instead of home at the end of the day. After my dancing
class I would have another half-hour bus journey before arriving home,
when I had to eat and to do my homework. However, the hours which I spent
at the dancing school allowed me to escape from the boredom of school life
and my home town into a romantic, highly charged world, with my storybook
fantasy experiences appearing to become real. Initially I found myself
behind the others, but with a certain amount of talent and a good memory
I soon became proficient (although my shyness spoiled my presentation),
and I was rewarded when the head of the school praised my improvement.
dan6
I then became a "student" as opposed to merely
attending classes, studying ballet, modern, jazz and national dancing.
However, when I was 14 I fractured my elbow during a fall in the summer
holidays, leaving me first unable to dance and then restricted by a temporarily
crooked arm. Shortly after recovering I experienced lower back pains, which
I now know were due to the fact that I was developing thoracic kypho-scoliosis.
My mother was concerned enough to pay for a private medical consultation,
but only my lower back was X-rayed and the problem went undiagnosed. I
carried on with my lessons until I reached the Sixth Form but never regained
my physical ability, although it was suggested that I went on to train
as a teacher at the Royal College of Dancing. The fact that I had failed
in my ambitions to become a professional dancer was painful for many years,
and it was actually a great relief when, in 1993, I finally understood
that it was my developing physical impairment which had prevented me from
succeeding.
dan7
Socially, my experiences at the dancing school were less
happy. I was viewed with suspicion because I went to the "snob school",
because my home town was regarded as being more "upmarket" than
the one where the school was situated - this was dominated by a Butlins
holiday camp, and a large proportion of the population originated from
the East End of London - and because I was lower-middle class while many
of the others came from working-class backgrounds. However, in reality
I came from a poorer family than the majority of the girls. I was therefore
relatively badly dressed, and unable to afford the accessories - brooches,
bracelets, particular types of bag and so on - for which the students went
through "crazes". I was also one of the few girls to wear glasses
- although by my teenage years I hated these and only wore them when it
was unavoidable. (I wore blue plastic National Health Service spectacles
with thick glass lenses; as well as being ugly, these were horrendously
uncomfortable and at one point caused running sores to develop behind my
ears which took many months to heal.)
dan8
As I grew older, my attitude to dancing changed. My self-confidence
improved, and I became increasingly disturbed by the prevailing atmosphere
of rivalry in the school, together with the bitchy, cliquish attitudes
of many of the girls. Even the youngest children, I now noticed, became
bitterly jealous of anyone singled out for praise, and some of the best
dancers' lives were made a misery. While I had originally been delighted
with the idea of training as a teacher and so gaining a passport into the
dancing world, I was now dismayed at the thought of spending the rest of
my life working in a similar school. As always, the reality had proven
rather different from the fiction.
dan9
I was also irritated by the hypocrisy which prevailed.
Our attendance was expected to be exemplary, with any absences explained
to the teacher. In fact, students often took unauthorised leave, but however
poor their subsequent excuses, these were always accepted. I almost never
missed a class except for illness, since there were no rival attractions
in my home town, but by the time I was fifteen and becoming disillusioned,
my attendance became less enthusiastic. Eventually one night I decided
to go straight home after leaving the High School, explaining honestly
- since I disliked lying - to my teacher the next evening that I had not
felt like coming to the lesson. The following Saturday I was summoned to
the front of the senior ballet class by the head of the school and asked
to explain my impertinence and rudeness. I then did lie and say that in
fact I had missed the class because I had been unwell; this excuse, though
palpably untrue, was accepted and the farce continued.
dan10
Eventually I left the dancing school some months after
I entered the Sixth Form at the High School. The head of the dancing school
perceived this as a "rebellion", and probably she was right.
I joined the local Youth Dance Company instead and danced for "fun",
and later at University as an undergraduate I continued with jazz dancing
classes at a nearby arts centre. However, at the end of my second term
at University I suffered a spontaneous fracture in my right foot, and it
never recovered sufficiently for me to continue. By the time that the dance
and exercise to music craze had hit the country in the early 1980s, I had
ceased to consider myself to be a dancer, and when dance music entered
the charts in the late 1980s, I had become too disabled to dance much at
all. However, I do practise Tai Chi and still dance in clubs occasionally,
and in the meantime, my training continues to be reflected in my body and
my attitude. Aside from any physical skills, dance training taught me that
practising an art requires self-discipline and a lifelong commitment to
learning; that a practitioner must endure any amount of pain and discomfort
in the furtherance of their art; and that the show must always go on.
dan11
Looking back, the attraction which dancing held for me
was complex and not easily explained. There was, of course, the romantic
fantasy created by numerous ballet-related stories, which in a very real
sense I was living out. Then it was creative, and although I had enjoyed
creative writing while at primary school, I had stopped writing completely
during my time at the High School and only rediscovered my ability after
leaving University,
so I had no other outlets. Then I was very musical, but did not enjoy playing
an instrument and was too shy to sing. Then the fact that only a few could
succeed brought out the competitor in me in a way which my High School
failed to do. Then, too, the stories held out the possibility of economic
independence while still a child - since only showbusiness provided a career
before the age of sixteen - and I was poor and hated school. Equally, there
is the ideal inherent in dance training of striving for physical perfection,
which was perhaps particularly attractive to me because of my poor sight
and the fact that my appearance did not fit the ethnic norms which I saw
around me. Finally, there was the highly charged homo-erotic atmosphere
familiar to all dance students, fulfiling a need of which I was barely
aware.
dan12
Dr Ju Gosling aka ju90's ABNORMAL: How Britain became body dysphoric and the key to a cure is available now for just £3.09 for the Kindle or in a limited-edition hardback with full-colour art plates for £20 inc UK postage and packing. |