Feb Photo Challenge 27 – Lets Dance

Daily Prompt: Let’s Dance

After reading today’s daily prompt, I just had to join in today. The question they ask is,
What are your earliest and fondest memories of dance?

As a few of you know, but if you don’t dance has been the main factor in my life. It consumed my childhood and I’m still dancing now. So for the last 42 years I have been dancing.

The question above I think is in two parts, first the earliest memory, which for me was at the age of two and a half. That was my first stage appearance. I was performing in a pantomime, Jack and The Beanstalk, and I was the mini jack who popped out of a pie that jack had been put in and he had shrunk, so my part was to hide in the pie side stage, then the giant pie got wheeled onto stage and out I popped. I did a twirl and a curtesy and then ran off stage being chased by widow Twankie. I remember this in so much detail. So that is my earliest dance and stage performance.

Now fondest will be harder to answer, baring in mind I was going to ballet from the age of two, dancing classes every night whilst at primary age, then off to ballet school at the age of eleven, then off to performing arts college at sixteen, then becoming a performer, then a dance teacher and still a dance teacher till this day. So as you can imagine in the last forty years I have done hundreds of performances, exams and classes, in all sorts of different places, in fields, in theatres, in residential homes, in studios, in village halls, in schools, on floats to name but a few. So to choose the fondest is very difficult.

But then if you look at the question, it says the fondest memory ‘of’ dance, so my fondest memory, that sticks with me, is when I was a child, I don’t know what age, I was taken to see the ballet Swan Lake at the big top. I remember the emotion I felt as I was watching the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I was mesmerized, glued to the ballerinas, watching their feet, their extended legs, the mens high jumps and the music just swept me away. Still now when I watch it I could cry all the way through because it is so beautiful, in fact there is a lump in my throat now just typing this. It’s amazing how something can touch you like that, and for someone else they feel nothing.