My career as a dancer was astoundingly brief, yet I still dream about it practically every other night. I don't think anything else in my life, before or since, caused me as much joy or as many tears.
I took ballet as a young child. Had I stuck with it then, I might have made it. But I quit after a year.
After we moved to Nuns' Island, I began again, taking classes one day a week at the local community centre. After a few years, my teacher suggested that a friend of mine and I take the intensive summer program offered by Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, the professional Montreal company. That was the turning point (no pun intended). I was hooked.
The world at Les Grands was like a song. No matter how awful things got in the outside world, everything was beautiful at the ballet:
It was also a highly competitive place where girls vied jealously with each other for the teacher's attention. I became, like all of them, neurotic about my weight. I was desperate to succeed. That desperation translated as physical tension, especially in my neck and shoulders. I was constantly being told to relax. (With the hindsight of age and experience, I wonder whether my chronic muscle tension wasn't a very early sign of the neuromuscular illness that was to assail me later in life). Notwithstanding this, I progressed nicely, received significant financial assistance, which was a great compliment, and moved into the professional training arm of the school, called L'Ecole Supérieure de La Danse des Grands Ballets Canadiens.
In 1976, I was one of the students chosen to dance in the Montreal Olympic Opening Ceremonies. We wore long white gowns trimmed with gold and set loose 100 pigeons into the sky. As I recall, they were supposed to have been doves but for some reason, 100 doves couldn't be found.
That fall, I was cast as a Cotton Candy Angel in the company's annual Christmas production of The Nutcracker. Spending every night in December at the theatre was heaven. I still think of that as being one of the best Christmases of my life.
Indirectly-related to ballet, but another highpoint... I was cast as "Juliet" in my CEGEP's drama class' production of a dance drama set to Tchaikovsky's ROMEO AND JULIET at Marianopolis College.
But 1977 was fast approaching. That meant graduation from CEGEP (College), mandatory summer jobs and preparing for university. How could I do that and still pursue ballet? Then one day in early spring my teacher called me over to her at the end of class.
Would I, she asked, be interested in pursuing a career as a dance teacher?
It is not given to we mere mortals to recognize pivotal moments in our lives. I did not recognize that casual question as a critical moment. But my poorly considered answer has haunted me the rest of my life.
No, I replied, I wanted to be a ballerina.
And with those words, I slammed the door in my face.
At the end of term, I was not invited back, not even to summer school. I was devastated. How could I face any of my dancing buddies, ever again? Mercifully, I was going away to university and thus was spared any chance encounter with classmates.
Two close friends went on to the professional company. For many years, the pain of my failure and the envy of their success prevented me from even seeing them dance. Every Christmas, when the radio began to play THE NUTCRACKER, I would begin to cry. But slowly, over time, I began to heal, though the scar tissue will forever be there. And it was my love of writing that brought me back to the ballet.
I got a part-time job on a Toronto Arts magazine called Toronto Tonight, for which I reviewed theatre and dance and did celebrity interviews. I now could see all the ballet that passed through town and continued to do so until the publication folded in the early 90's and a newly-hired publicist culled me from the press list, years of service notwithstanding.
An ironic footnote to the ballet publicist story is the fact that I had actually been offered the job before her, and had (foolishly, as it turned out [no pun intended]) decided to honour my commitment to my then business partner.
In 1990 I joined a folk dance company, Green Fiddle Morris, and danced with them until illness stepped in.
To find out more about me, I invite you to browse through my incarnations, both current and prior, by clicking on their respective links
