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Josephine Jewkes,
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Josephine Jewkes, dancer with Rambert and formerly an ENB Principal, writes each month on the "dancing life".
Link to the previous column
November 98 The first two weeks of November dawned on a familiar scene: me pottering round quietly at home with a slight limp, while Rambert went into Sadler's Wells with Cruel Garden - a success by all accounts, though I could not bring myself to go and watch 'out front'. It soon became evident that the first steroid injection had brought improvement up to a point but still nowhere near the levels I require for a pain-free existence, dancing or no. Money rears its inconvenient head again as Rambert does not wish to go cap in hand to the Royal Benevolent Fund any longer and so I am once more on tenterhooks as to how much of the cost of four private consultations and the steroid injection I am to bear. It also becomes clear that another injection is necessary and I accordingly underwent that on 18 November. Again it is 'wait and see' time for ten days and then two or three weeks of rest to follow, taking me into the New Year and the time when my salary is cut to half. Given this state of affairs it is hardly surprising if I turn my thoughts seriously to retraining for another career. I have always loved drawing, painting, sculpting, also planning, designing and decorating the houses I have lived in. The 'house business' has in fact earned me a good deal more money than I made in my dancing career and my plans for our next project are also geared in that direction to tide me and my husband over this difficult transitional stage in our lives. The problem is of course that of finding something as fulfilling to do in the future as dancing has been in the past. I realise that my creative urge - suppressed dance-wise by the injury - has been displaced into planning the wedding, redesigning our future flat in great detail and beginning work on the illustrations for Maria Fay's forthcoming 'Floor Barre' series for the Dancing Times. Oh, and designing a house extension for my mother. (Imagine my frustration when the brochure of exciting events for London's Architecture Week plops onto the doormat on the penultimate day, which is also the day of my second hip injection!) All in all, a career in some sort of design capacity sounds most suitable for me and my 'phone line is red hot as I ring around for information and brochures and hobble off to the library to trawl through the mysteries of UCAS etc. While at ballet school, I took three A levels in order that I could go to University as a mature student when my dancing days were over, so in a sense I have been preparing for this for many years. It is difficult to know at this moment whether it is the moment or whether I am simply thrashing around trying to take control of my own destiny. Several colleagues have cited cases where their injured friends have bowed to the incurability of their injuries and who have then recovered completely after a few months and resumed their dancing careers! Very nice, but inconvenient if one is halfway through a Foundation or Degree Course paid for by the Dancers' Resettlement Company who only give you one chance to retrain funded by them and "Always at my back I hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near" this only postpones the moment of truth which we must all come to, whether injured or not. Colleagues of mine continue to bug me to begin teaching, believing that I have too much experience to waste by not passing it on. In a sense this is true, and I have always felt in the back of my mind that I would be a more natural-born teacher than I am a dancer, because of my analytical turn of mind. In my August '97 Diary (what a long time ago that seems to be!) and again in more detail in May '98 I touch on my misgivings about the whole teaching set-up in this country, where the mediocre are celebrated and certificated and the excellent are marginalised. Nothing new, I am sure, but depressing nonetheless. Another example of this springs to mind as I heard about the death of beautiful Svetlana Beriosova, former ballerina of the Royal Ballet, though forced into the shadow of Margot Fonteyn, much to the sadness of her many fans. Not only was Svetlana a glorious classic dancer (a film of her dancing the tricky Waltz solo in Les Sylphides is the best I have ever seen) but she also proved to be a very good teacher and coach. I studied with her when I was an invisible member of the London Festival Ballet corps de ballet. From her I learnt Giselle's mad scene, Act II of Swan Lake and most of Sleeping Beauty. I could do this simply by walking into "Dance Works" open studios as she was teaching all-comers there. A few miles away were the studios of the Royal Ballet School and Company but she was never to my knowledge invited there to teach or coach and pass on her knowledge and style. Perhaps she was her own worst enemy, perhaps she refused to go back, but she lived within spitting distance of the place until her death and not once in 20 years or so did she go through those portals. From the performances I have watched at the Royal Ballet, they could have done with the aristocratic example and generous help and encouragement which Svetlana lavished on her lucky pupils. If I teach, I would aim for the standard of a Svetlana, a Maria Fay, a Mohsen El-Wahil, and this will not be achieved by attending the RAD or Royal Ballet Teachers' Training Courses where I would have to unlearn the things I have so painstakingly leant in the course of my career. I have had several offers to teach at Central School of Ballet on an informal basis and I feel some duty to do so in memory of Christopher Gable and his contribution to my artistic life. I am therefore considering (depending on the health of my hip) giving one or two classes in January. I remember from my own schooldays the clouds of glory which a practising dancer (!) trails in the eyes of their ambitious students, and the general air of professional class which one can bring to bear in the studio. This has its own value once in a while, whether they learn anything else of value or not. From my point of view, teaching a class of 17 or 18 year old graduating students is a great deal simpler than inculcating a class of nine year old beginners in the groundwork of classical technique. For this I would need to go to a very good teaching course in either Stockholm, Hungary, Moscow or Paris. Anything else would be unsuitable for me, given my personal view of what constitutes beauty - and it is only a personal view. On the other hand, Maria Fay (whom I hugely respect) does not believe that I need the schooling of a traditional course. She says that I must believe in myself and consider all that I have consciously absorbed from her, from Woytec Lowski (on the editing of his book and musical accompaniment) as well as from all my other teachers with whose names you are familiar! As you must gather by now, I question my every move and so this encouragement means a lot to me. Perhaps I will only discover my strengths and weaknesses 'on the wing' and must therefore be prepared to be flexible in my response. In any case, I do not want to feel that the only thing I can do in my life is to dance or teach dancing (am I greedy?) and so, for my stability and sanity, I am planning my home study courses as previously mentioned, ready to put them onto full power should the hip let me down completely. What else can I do?
A visit to Frankfurt Ballet's week at Sadler's Wells did not leave me in the euphoric state experienced by everyone else I spoke to. Allowances should be made for my restricted view seat and my "restricted-view" emotional state. Perhaps this is a self-protective instinct as I prepare myself for becoming an ex-dancer. Then again, maybe I just didn't 'get it'.
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