Any of you who have followed this blog will know that isn’t strictly true. However, one of the things I remember from early on in my childhood was my mum meeting me once a week after school and taking me to dancing lessons in an old hall on the former site of the Singer sewing machine factory in the town I grew up in, Clydebank. I recall having a wee blue vanity case – a round bag with rigid sides and a mirror in the lid – wherein I carried my leotard, wrap-around cardigan, ballet pumps and tap shoes. I did ballet and tap (no surprises there) and also modern dance, which I seem to remember culminated in one show where, dressed in football kit, we dribbled footballs around the stage to the tune of “Fitba’ Crazy” and I got so caught up in the moment that at the end I kicked my ball right out into the audience. I don’t have many other strong memories but I do recall being extremely nonplussed at being moved from the class of girls of my own age (six or seven I think) to a class of older girls because I was much taller than the petite little fairies in mine. I remember making the emphatic decision from which I would not be swayed that my dancing days were over when, after an end-of term-show, I stood backstage in my tutu holding the roll of fruit sweets we had been given as a prize, watching my former classmates being given a small bouquet of flowers on stage for their darling little performance. My mother realised then that I would never be the “little girl” she seemed to crave.
Although I loved watching all the musicals shown on what always seemed to be rainy Saturday afternoons, marvelling at the likes of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and Gene Kelly with Cyd Charisse,
I didn’t dance again until I was in primary 7 (aged 11) when we were taught “Scottish Country Dancing” for our end of year dance (a tradition that strangely enough seemed to last, as Vee did the same in her final year before going to high school). I really got into it – dances with names like The Military Two-Step, The Dashing White Sergeant, the Canadian Barn Dance, Strip The Willow (which sounds like something from The Wicker Man) and my own favourite, mostly for the name – The Gay Gordons (named I believe, as so many dances were, for the Regiment of Gordon Highlanders). We had our dance but again my hopes were dashed when, during an “elimination dance” after getting down to the final 3 couples, my partner and then “boyfriend” in as much as you can have one at that young age, one Scott Riddell (and “Ridd-ell” mind, not “Riddle”) and his recent detention caused us to have to leave the floor. You won’t be surprised to learn that he was given the elbow shortly after. I fared better at the disco, which my teacher, the wonderful Mrs. Farmer, had organised as an additional treat for us in the upstairs function suite of a local pub (imagine the excitement of a group of 30 pre-teens going into a PUB!) where I remember having no shortage of dance-partners including a lad called Kevin who shimmied close to me in his shirt, by then somehow open to his navel. I think this had more to do with the fact that I was wearing an off the shoulder white gypsy-style top WITH NO BRA and not my dancing skills. I also remember one poor girl called Aileen Keys (known as Concorde Keys, on account of her large pointy nose) turning up wearing a lovely blue glittery blouse, only for it to turn almost transparent under the disco lights, showing her white sensible vest underneath.
The 1980s weren’t much of a time for dancing – the only important one you had to know was how to do that slow march forward, arms raised, first left, then right to cross at the wrists as demonstrated by Diana Dors (her 2nd mention in my blogging) to Adam and the Ants’ “Prince Charming”.
By the middle of the decade, dancing was something you did almost self-consciously, shuffling your feet from side to side while looking nonchalantly around like the girls from The Human League. I do remember being slightly more animated on the night met my first proper boyfriend, one Andrew Graham Hussey when we danced to “Perfect Skin” by Lloyd Cole and the Commotions.
My partner Gee has never been much of a dancer – our most recent turn about the dance floor was at a wedding reception last year where we jigged about to “our song” – “Fairytale Of New York” by Kirsty MacColl and the Pogues (a strange choice maybe but it means a lot to us!) and, for some strange reason, “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” by Wham! But that will probably be him for another 20-odd years.
So, in the 1990s it was down to our mate Graeme Nelson (from the exotic town of St. Helens, near Liverpool) to be my dance partner at several ska/ reggae nights in the Maryhill Community Halls in aid of Anti-Apartheid. Gee was more than happy to sit sipping Red Stripe lager (which you couldn’t buy as the venue didn’t have a license but came free with the purchase of a leaflet about the African National Congress) while Graeme and I did what we jokingly called our “dirty dancing” to the likes of Jimmy Cliff or Prince Buster. One of my colleagues from the vegan café where I worked at the time, Isobel, asked me if Gee minded us dancing like that, to which I sent her off with a flea in her ear. Graeme was a close mate (we did have a snog once though when we were rather tiddly outside the Halt on Woodlands Road for a laugh) but we were just happy to have someone else who liked to dance.
So why the history of my life in dance? Well, tonight I’m off to a second workshop with choreographer Christine Devaney from performance group Curious Seed who is trying to get a group of 3 teenager, a drama teacher in her 20s, 3 over 40’s and a woman in her 60s to perform a companion piece to her company’s show “Push” which will be on next year. I only hope I don’t fall like I did last time. Just don’t tell me to break a leg x
No comments:
Post a Comment