Once was a dancer.

Recently I went to a dance class in a professional dance centre. I can't remember the last time I did this. Thirty years ago? At least.

I'm talking about the kind of place where young people with collarbones you could slice your thumb upon, flit around in loose leggings and spaghetti strap tops. Or sit cross-legged on stools - not chairs - stools, exuding effortless cool and supernatural flexibility.

Pineapple for example, in Covent Garden. Does anyone remember the sweatshirts?

Places where, on audition days, dreams were realised or crushed within the space of a sweaty ten minutes. A  future dependent upon the sour-faced, choreographer raising his or her bony finger and pointing at YOU.

Want proof?

Look no further than the fact that the very first open audition for The Spice Girls was held at  Danceworks behind Oxford St. Here's the original ad in the dancer's  bible,  The Stage.

I didn’t go by the way. I was already too old. My era was earlier. The days of Cats and 42nd Street, for which I was called back three times. (If you check my bio on any Social Media profile it's there: I really was a tap dancer.)

Anyway, I didn't get the 42nd Street gig. Another girl, who better fitted the costume of the girl that was leaving did.  Story of my life really ...

But you get the gist - I knew these places. They were my hood.

So, back to that class.

I'm in my fifties now and as that brings a certain really-don't-give-a **** attitude, I'm not saying I was intimidated by the splits going on next to the sandwiches  ... but I definitely felt a little out of place. And those thirty years made themselves known, roared up and whispered - What on earth are you doing here?

Slightly subdued, I sat and waited and drank a giant green smoothie, which in hindsight wasn't such a good idea ...

Anyway the class started. Jazz for the over 40s and I was reassured by both the age and general roundedness of most of my fellow participants and the instructor, who I will call H. Definitely an ex-trouper (you can always spot them) with candy-floss hair, piled up in a youthful, ever-glamorous messy swirl. And definitely carrying a few extra pounds ... But here's the thing ... H knew better. H was wearing a cute little black tunic, that skimmed over any bumps and lumps. Me? I had my gym kit on, a sports bra designed to support the weight of two sumo wrestlers, plus an equally tight gym top. I might as well have wrapped myself in clingfilm. The pressure ... My chest looked like the prow of HMS bounty, swelling into the room and my stomach was the hold, sloshing the contents of that green smoothie starboard to port ... port to starboard …

I did the only sensible thing left. I went to the back line and stood in the part of the studio where I couldn't see myself in a mirror.

Off we went! Don't cha by the Pussy cat Dolls blasting over the sound system. Now it's a catchy tune, and although I'm feeling more like Griselda than any kind of kitten, I'm swaying and clicking my knees the way my mother dances and you know? The class wasn't difficult.

Which made it all the worse, all the more shocking, when I couldn't do it.

And how could that be?

Because I was once a dancer! It's right up there at the beginning of my verbal CV. Was a dancer. I could do a triple-time step, with wings, and pirouette  across the studio on pointe.

But now? A triple time step? With Wings? Nowadays my rheumatoid swollen ankle struggles to hold my weight as I attempt to stand on one leg whilst cleaning my teeth.

And pirouettes? (Well I don't think it helped that my high-blood-pressure medicine had run out three days before, and my prescription hadn't been renewed and no one had warned me.) One turn and my head was a washing machine on spin cycle. I couldn't put one foot in front of the other, I was that dizzy.

Take it easy -  H kept saying, all lovely pouty lips and candy-floss hair and forgiving tunic. I wanted to tell her, that I was taking it easy and that she really wouldn't have wanted to witness me actually going for it. but I was too busy concentrating on staying upright.

No,  I couldn't do it. And that super- power I once had for picking up choreography has obviously  shrunk to size of a peanut. Where has it gone? Because I used to be the girl on the front row, getting a new routine first time through.

Not anymore.

I left that studio and I cried all the way home, thinking of how I could cancel or recoup the advance payment I'd made for the rest of term. I even did something I've never done before, I posted about it on a lovely FB group I’m with Postcards and then I went to sleep, blubbery and sad.

But tomorrow, to quote Scarlett O'Hara, is always another day,  and I  woke up the following morning to a whole bunch of lovely FB comments from women my age, all trying and (sometimes) failing to do similar things. The overriding message being: don't give up.

But just what is it, I wondered, that we're all trying so hard  not to give up?

There's the obvious of course. We're trying not to give up moving, dancing, having fun, touching our toes, wearing cute dance gear, leaving the house after six pm ...

But it's much deeper than that.

The tears and the shock came from the realisation that a large part of my identity isn't there anymore. Once was a dancer? How can I say that when I can barely put one foot in front of another?

Everyone knows that we lose bits of ourselves. In the long grass of domesticity, of children and partners and ageing parents, in the drip drip drip of daily life, fragments  of our younger selves get shelved and eventually lost altogether. This much is expected, but to misplace such a large chunk of yourself? Like a Greenland glacier? Let's say I felt the shock of the fall. I thought I'd be a dancer to the end and it simply never occurred to me how vulnerable the puzzle that clicks together to form our identify can become.

All this was a few weeks ago and I'm writing now because I didn't cancel the class. I went back again,  and again,  and again. I've bought myself a looser top and I'm refraining from the smoothies. I'm even standing in front of the mirror. I'm still near the back ... but not quite at the back. I've met a lovely 80-yr-old ex ballet dancer who told me last week that she only retired from her last professional dancing job at sixty-eight! (I feel she'll get a whole post to herself one day.)

Most of all I'm keeping on keeping on,  and shaky pirouette by shaky pirouette I'm reclaiming that fragile but oh-so-valuable part of my identity. Once a dancer, always a dancer.

Cary

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