Helene Cooper Blog

Allow me to introduce...

...Helene Cooper. Who?…I hear you say. It’s unlikely that you may be familiar with what I do but with the help of this blog I hope to become better acquainted with you – the dancing public. Whether you are a fellow choreographer, dancer or avid dance viewer I hope to provide some light reading which you can relate to.

I would like to use my first few blogs to explain the route I have taken in my life in order to end up where I am now: I currently live in London where I was born twenty two years ago. However, I grew up in Essex – a fact I try to deny. In response to ‘where are you from?’ I often find myself responding with ‘oh, East London’ which was in fact where I went to High School. Not much better some would say - being a cockney rather than an Essex girl - but apparently being born within earshot of the Bow Bells makes one a true cockney and at least I can dissociate myself from being an Essex girl. I was an ‘active’ child shall we say, typically moving from one hobby to another as children tend to do. My first encounter with dance was at the age of four or five. I rely on my mother to tell me about my childhood as I have a worse memory than a goldfish but she cannot remember exactly. I think I have a visual memory as opposed to digital. I tend to remember images, people’s faces, places and have a pretty good sense of direction but I am awful with factual information, dates, mathematical and scientific equations and just numbers in general. I’ve always wondered whether this leads me to choreography naturally. Perhaps I’m not genetically wired to be an investment banker – well that’s my excuse anyway.

So at the age of four or five my mother took me to a ballet class in a church hall at the top of my road taught by (in her words) ‘a witchy type woman and her mother’. I’m not quite sure why I left there but at the age of five or six I went to a local stage school run by Mrs Carr who offered classes in Ballet and Tap. My mother recalls it being basic and said that I left after only a term as I ‘wasn’t very interested’. I have always appreciated the fact that my parents have allowed me to do whatever I wanted to but I do wonder where I would be now had I had one of those pushy mothers who drag their children to ballet class in order to relive their missed youth.

My love for sport began at Junior school and with gymnastics in particular. I trained on the school squad and then later joined a local gymnastics school. I started to compete at the age of eleven but found that I had discovered gymnastics too that and that twelve years old was considered to old to compete unless you were professional. And so sadly upon starting High School I once again abandoned my latest hobby – a decision which at times I have hugely regretted.

At high school I continued with sport – Netball, Athletics, Trampolining and Basketball but my next exposure to dance was when I tagged along with a friend to her Latin American and Ballroom classes at the Hutson School of Dancing. I was very shy child and even shier teenager and so the prospect of having to make physical contact with someone else was petrifying. Unfortunately the glitzy costumes and fancy shoes were not enough to retain my attendance at the school and ballroom dancing became just another attempted hobby. Yet again, I regret not having continued with ballroom dancing as experiencing contact whilst dancing from a young age is an invaluable skill.

But then came the teenage years when you were only considered ‘cool’ if you did street dance. And so my pursuit of a career as ‘a dancer in a music video’ began enrolling at Pineapple Performing Arts Sunday School with a friend from High School– partly the result of boredom at the weekend.

But then life suddenly became serious. Prompted by various career talks I decided that it was necessary to choose my future career at the age of only fourteen. I was quite an intense child and came to the conclusion that whatever GCSE’s I chose would determine what A-Levels I could do and in turn what degree I could do and therefore what career would be available to me. After some research I decided I wanted to be an International Investment Banker as I discovered…that was where the money was. So I took a GCSE in Economics planning to follow this route. And what went wrong I hear you say…for that you will have to wait for my next blog.

Posted by Helene at September 20, 2007 10:15 PM