Josephine Jewkes, “Draw of Shoes...”
	Josephine Jewkes, formerly a dancer with Rambert and an ENB Principal, writes about her new life following a hip injury... Link to the previous column April 99 The house move was as exhausting and complicated as may be expected, especially as our collection of books ( and dance books), videos (and dance videos) is so huge. With my retirement from the dance scene, the loft full of Dancing Times magazines dating back to 1952 or so now seems somewhat surplus to requirements! These, and the boxes full of old and new dance books and videos were my research and inspiration in preparing a new role. Not many dancers are stimulated by reading about dance and most prefer to find themselves in a role by experiencing it physically in the ballet studio. I had grown up with this library and was happy to use these resources to escape from the intimidating technical perfection of my peers. Theophile Gautier's descriptions of Elssler and Taglioni - for example - fired my imagination and made me conscious of trying to project this out to the audience - in fact I fell into the trap of trying this too hard while still at school and was fortunate in having Christopher Gable's wise words to set me on the right track: "You only have to THINK something for your audience to understand it - you don't need to spell it out" (But you do have to think!). Someone showed me Derek Deane's latest disparaging remarks about British dancers - it certainly gained him some good publicity for a not terribly fresh and adventurous repertoire. I do remember how this disparagement made me feel as a British dancer in English National Ballet and I am very happy nowadays (and grateful) to have a pair of legs and arms in working order enough for me to enjoy cycling through the bluebell woods in Kew Gardens to sell tickets from the kiosk there. How angry and frustrated with my body I was when I danced. Negativity from within and from without eventually becomes too much to bear and I feel as if I have escaped with my life! I popped into Rambert some days ago to meet Tim who was teaching there and to catch up with my friends who had just returned from touring in Turin and the Ukraine. I watched a rehearsal of a piece new to their repertoire and which none of them seems to like dancing very much. Of course one would never know that by watching the run through and they did it as full-out as they always do with with everything, even tho' the hybrid style of it is rather foreign to them. I sat there thinking 'normal people' thoughts like "How do they remember all those steps?!!" In spite of all this normal living I have a drawer full of brand new pointe shoes left over from my ballerina days which I am not yet ready to part with. Why? In case of.... what? I don't know. It has taken a long time to decide that the dance library is unnecessary now (Tim does not think he will use it enough to justify keeping it) and so I will either sell the books etc or donate them to a dance school, but the shoes... Maybe one day my hip will be good enough for me to do a class for pure enjoyment, just for the sensation of moving to music and then I can reprise the weightless and elongated feeling of a few steps on pointe. Could I ever do this without reawakening all my old 'but-it-has-to-be-perfect' demons? Probably not.
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