Passion For Dance Returns!

25 years in the performing arts and 25 years running my own business, two very different careers followed by retirement. It was exhilarating, tough, interesting, frustrating, joyful, rewarding but never, ever boring! What started with a passion for dance as a teenager, led me to an international dance career, many years as producer and performing arts manager and the founding and building of a small business. Ohhhh…do I have stories to tell!

Over the decades I was often asked how and why I ended up changing direction so drastically. The “why” was simple to answer – had to make a living. The “how” I answered by explaining the logical links between jobs. So much that I learned in the arts applied later to my business career. The creativity, the determination to succeed, the hard work, the risk-taking, “rehearsing before a performance” and of course that age-old cliché: The Show Must Go On!

Even though I wasn’t involved directly with dance any longer, I attended occasional dance shows and whenever travelling tried to catch some of my favorite companies. I was stunned about the incredible technical progress dancers made over the years. But when it came to the actual works performed, it wasn’t very often that I was inspired. Usually I was hyper-critical and cynical and I would be analyzing why it wasn’t successful in my view. Whatever happened to my passion for dance? Like my 25-year old dancers’ body, my love and passion for dance seemed to have deteriorated over the decades.

And then, Marilyn and I were invited by Ballet Victoria’s AD, Paul DeStrooper (also an RWB Alumni) to help coach the company dancers preparing for their upcoming production of Romeo & Juliet. Most of our time we spent working with Juliet (Andrea Bayne) and Romeo (Peter Nicholas Taylor) and helped them find who those iconic characters are. What a gorgeous couple!

So just imagine, we haven’t been in a dance studio for many decades, our 70-year old bodies are falling apart, our memories are fading so we barely remember the names of the steps and everybody holds their breath, when we try to show a step, praying we don’t hurt ourselves.

But to our great surprise and delight, our passion for dance is back! What a joy to work with these young, beautiful and talented dancers. What an honour to be able to share with them some of our knowledge and experience gathered over the years. They are all so eager to learn, listen and try new things.

It’s like we never finished our dance careers. We felt right at home and started working like we used to. Same kind of studio, same kind of smell, dancers standing around waiting to be told what to do next, the same kind of tension and nervousness. And all those emotions, so close to the surface while rehearsing a challenging piece of choreography.

OK, so we mostly use our voices, faces, hands and arms to demonstrate, but we do feel like dancers all over again. How fortunate we are, to have lived such interesting and varied lives. We may be retired, but we still think, feel and move like dancers. Our passion for dance has returned, or maybe it never went away. Thank you Paul, thank you Andrea, thank you Peter and thank you, all you beautiful dancers for reminding us how rewarding it is to be a dancer.

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