Tapping to a new life

A week or so ago, I wrote about my Zumba class. today, I went to a long tap class, and started reflecting on how doing tap dancing has made a difference in my life. I think I'm going to turn this into a story for the Witness Short Story competition but this is just a first draft.

As a child, my parents didn't have a lot of money, but they gave Jen and me every advantage they could. We never missed out on the things that they considered part of education. Fortunately, there weren't as many activities around in "our days" or my poor parents might have bankrupted themselves with extra tennis lessons, karate, computer classes and the myriad things children seem to do after school nowadays. We had piano lessons and eleocution lessons and when a local ballet class was started, they signed us up. I remember the pride with which i donned my little royal blue tunic with PR (Pamela Read - the teacher's initials) embroidered in little flowers on it. I loved the lessons - pointing my toes with the best and doing a pas-de-chat with my big black cat in my arms for authenticity once I got home.

Then we moved - and a lot of things changed. The piano teachers I had had were superb and I loved the lessons and really made excellent progress. But the move meant leaving my big city teachers and their studios and learning on a Hall piano at school. And the cosy ballet lessons in a studio and the chance to dance unrestrainedly just for fun were replaced by a splintery hall floor and exams and concerts. I was soon discarded as not being good enough for exams and this was quite true. I had grown tall and gangly and have always had 2 left feet. I did the concerts - but was always placed in a group younger - and shorter- than I was, while my peers got to wear tutus and float across the stage. I got to wear stiff drum majorette clothes, and I will never hear Marche Militaire with pleasure again.

Something inside me died during those concerts - and as soon as my parents would let me, I gave up ballet. I still read ballet annuals and went to every NAPAC show my parents could afford. But I didn’t dance again.

As my children grew up, I sent them to ballet lessons and national dancing lessons, and was always glad they were able to dance with a gentle and encouraging teacher. They grew up and stopped dancing, and dance faded out of my life.

The 3 years ago I was approached to include my choir in a dance show. As I sat in the darkened auditorium that night, the dance-spark that had died started to smoulder again. There were women – most of them quite young, but some of them approaching middle age – participating in a show along with the children and teenage girls (and boys) who were doing ballet, tap and modern dancing. How I longed to join in – but who would let a more than middle-aged, overweight woman join?

Domaine did! She said “Come along – you will be fine.” Luckily, there were a couple of us more “mature” dancers, and we didn’t have to join the flying feet of the younger women. With infinite patience (in her own way) she taught us to flap-ball-change, to crab roll, to move our hands AND our feet at the same time. And then she put us in her show. We wore wigs, false eyelashes and feather boas. We danced with all the other adults as nuns in the Sound of Music. The next year we added the dramatic flow to the show – and got to wear the really glitzy Abba outfits, much to the disgust of the sexy young mums.
What a gift this has been to me. I have gained my confidence about dancing back. I have had a chance to dance on a big stage – and I love it. My tap lessons are the happiest ½ hour of my week. I’ve learnt that the participation is everything – not whether you’re a great dancer, but whether you have the stickability to practise till you get the steps right, the gumption to go out there and act, the sense of humour to laugh at your mistakes, the sheer joy of using your feet to interpret the music, the camaraderie of dancing with friends. I find myself in dancing. Thank you Domaine for believing in me.