When Angela asked me to write this article I accepted without too much thought: I was in the middle of organising the Greek dance workshop with Dimitris Triantafyllidis and I was ‘en route’ to doing something else- so her timing was perfect! Sitting here now, I wonder where to begin – why not at the beginning?
My introduction to Circle Dancing was literally accidental. I was driving home from school (yes, I was a PE teacher) when someone drove into the back of my car, which was a write-off. Close friends invited me to stay with them for a day or so and asked if I wanted to join them at the Equinox celebrations that weekend. “OK” I replied, “what’s an equinox?” That was my first introduction to DANCE (after all I was a county tennis and international lacrosse player at the time!).
And there it all began…
About three years later, I decided to ‘give up the day job’ – NOT with the intention of teaching dance at the time but simply because I didn’t want to turn into a sad old PE teacher. My circle dance teacher at the time (Judy de la Hoyde) suggested I contact local special schools to take the dance there – which I did. Little by little other possibilities came my way and I embraced them all – dancing with children with learning difficulties; adults with a mental handicap (yes, I know all the terms have changed now – but this was then); adults with a mental illness, the elderly – and even a ‘normal’ regular evening class or two. Before I knew what was happening, I was dancing somewhere every day and sometimes twice a day. “Is this a hobby that’s got out of hand?” I was asked.
Regular classes grew – I even decided to teach my first day workshop. I have never been so tired in my life on the following Monday – “never again” I promised. Somehow there was another one – and another – and another… now at home and abroad – and practically EVERY weekend.
I wanted and needed to dance with other ‘big names’ in the dance world but I didn’t want to travel abroad to them – so I invited them to me! They came and now the twice-yearly workshops I organise with international teachers sit regularly in my diary.
Gabriele Wosien gave me another kick forward during one of the workshops I organised for her many moons ago: sitting at home talking with her, when she suggested that I offer a teacher training course in England. So with that endorsement, I created my training course and thankfully dancers want to join me to learn about the art of teaching.
Before I really knew where I was, I was doing this full time. Initially the government supported me – they had a scheme called the Enterprise Allowance Scheme to support unemployed people who wanted to become self-employed. They gave me £40 a week to dance. It wasn’t enough to live on – but it allowed me to take a risk and go for it.
Why all this background information? Really to show you that it wasn’t necessarily a conscious decision to become a full time teacher – it was a state of being that grew and developed. Now it is fuelled by my passion and love of teaching this wonderful form of dance.
So what is it? To be successful (and by that I mean, earning enough money to live) you have to have many different skills: obviously you need to be a good teacher and have something to offer that means that people want to come and dance with you. You need to be passionate and committed; an organiser; a forward planner; a communicator; an accountant…
Those are the practical issues – but what is that has kept me so fully immersed in the circle dance world for so long? It is that quality that we all know about which is so difficult to define but most significantly for me, it was also meeting and dancing with Friedel Kloke-Eibl nearly twenty years ago. Life changing is a phrase that comes to mind and for many reasons.
For me as a dancer, when I first discovered Friedel’s dances there was a real ‘wow’ factor. As I danced in Germany with her more and more (yes, I did end up doing the travelling!) the way I moved started to change and the inner change that so often occurs with the dance started to take shape. It has taken a long time to be able to put it all into words but now I think I can. Quite simply, when I dance spirit meets body. I’m not someone who can sit and meditate and I don’t attend any regular form of church service – but when I dance certain dances – THERE is my form of spiritual practice. For me as a teacher there is so much that keeps me going – there is the obvious, which we all know, and then there is something else. To be part of the creativity, part of the welding of friendships, part of the process – to see people grow and develop; to see people achieve so much more than they thought possible. I could sound ‘born again’ – perhaps I am!
So what else do you do as someone who is working full time with the dance? That depends on who you are! Me? I have a problem with my brain – it keeps thinking of things to do; things to offer the network; things to improve the quality of the material we work with!
I am passionate about the quality of music that I dance to (remember those hissy tapes?). So over the years I have tried to find the original music wherever possible – and that led me to developing “Circles of Music” which is a catalogue that sources CDs that are not available in mainstream stores. It is also why I spend hours working with dance teachers like Yves Moreau and Matti Goldschmidt to source recordings of traditional Bulgarian, Balkan and Israeli tunes and produce the notation booklets.
Why is so little written about Circle Dancing in English? Until very recently with the advent of June Watts’ book there was almost nothing. People kept asking me about various aspects of the dance – so I collate and produce booklets of articles which I think people will find of interest (The Dancing Circles – volumes 3 & 4 are the latest).
You need to be a workaholic to fit it all in – there are simply just not enough days in the week. “Why are you tired?” I was once asked, “You only teach dance.” I smiled as a reply.
It most certainly is extremely tiring at times; it most definitely is all consuming; it is greatly enhanced by having a partner either fully supportive or equally committed to it; it is certainly more than simply teaching the dances.
The handful of us who do teach Circle dance for a living are all immensely fortunate to be so fully immersed in a network which offers such a fantastic medium and such warm and open hearted people to work with – but we are not ‘lucky’ – we have worked very hard for it.
Much is Serendipity – being in the right place at the right time – but there lies another story!!!
This article appeared in Grapevine, Winter 2006
pted without too much thought: I was in the middle of organising the Greek dance workshop with Dimitris Triantafyllidis and I was ‘en route’ to doing something else- so her timing was perfect! Sitting here now, I wonder where to begin – why not at the beginning?
My introduction to Circle Dancing was literally accidental. I was driving home from school (yes, I was a PE teacher) when someone drove into the back of my car, which was a write-off. Close friends invited me to stay with them for a day or so and asked if I wanted to join them at the Equinox celebrations that weekend. “OK” I replied, “what’s an equinox?” That was my first introduction to DANCE (after all I was a county tennis and international lacrosse player at the time!).
And there it all began…
About three years later, I decided to ‘give up the day job’ – NOT with the intention of teaching dance at the time but simply because I didn’t want to turn into a sad old PE teacher. My circle dance teacher at the time (Judy de la Hoyde) suggested I contact local special schools to take the dance there – which I did. Little by little other possibilities came my way and I embraced them all – dancing with children with learning difficulties; adults with a mental handicap (yes, I know all the terms have changed now – but this was then); adults with a mental illness, the elderly – and even a ‘normal’ regular evening class or two. Before I knew what was happening, I was dancing somewhere every day and sometimes twice a day. “Is this a hobby that’s got out of hand?” I was asked.
Regular classes grew – I even decided to teach my first day workshop. I have never been so tired in my life on the following Monday – “never again” I promised. Somehow there was another one – and another – and another… now at home and abroad – and practically EVERY weekend.
I wanted and needed to dance with other ‘big names’ in the dance world but I didn’t want to travel abroad to them – so I invited them to me! They came and now the twice-yearly workshops I organise with international teachers sit regularly in my diary.
Gabriele Wosien gave me another kick forward during one of the workshops I organised for her many moons ago: sitting at home talking with her, when she suggested that I offer a teacher training course in England. So with that endorsement, I created my training course and thankfully dancers want to join me to learn about the art of teaching.
Before I really knew where I was, I was doing this full time. Initially the government supported me – they had a scheme called the Enterprise Allowance Scheme to support unemployed people who wanted to become self-employed. They gave me £40 a week to dance. It wasn’t enough to live on – but it allowed me to take a risk and go for it.
Why all this background information? Really to show you that it wasn’t necessarily a conscious decision to become a full time teacher – it was a state of being that grew and developed. Now it is fuelled by my passion and love of teaching this wonderful form of dance.
So what is it? To be successful (and by that I mean, earning enough money to live) you have to have many different skills: obviously you need to be a good teacher and have something to offer that means that people want to come and dance with you. You need to be passionate and committed; an organiser; a forward planner; a communicator; an accountant…
Those are the practical issues – but what is that has kept me so fully immersed in the circle dance world for so long? It is that quality that we all know about which is so difficult to define but most significantly for me, it was also meeting and dancing with Friedel Kloke-Eibl nearly twenty years ago. Life changing is a phrase that comes to mind and for many reasons.
For me as a dancer, when I first discovered Friedel’s dances there was a real ‘wow’ factor. As I danced in Germany with her more and more (yes, I did end up doing the travelling!) the way I moved started to change and the inner change that so often occurs with the dance started to take shape. It has taken a long time to be able to put it all into words but now I think I can. Quite simply, when I dance spirit meets body. I’m not someone who can sit and meditate and I don’t attend any regular form of church service – but when I dance certain dances – THERE is my form of spiritual practice. For me as a teacher there is so much that keeps me going – there is the obvious, which we all know, and then there is something else. To be part of the creativity, part of the welding of friendships, part of the process – to see people grow and develop; to see people achieve so much more than they thought possible. I could sound ‘born again’ – perhaps I am!
So what else do you do as someone who is working full time with the dance? That depends on who you are! Me? I have a problem with my brain – it keeps thinking of things to do; things to offer the network; things to improve the quality of the material we work with!
I am passionate about the quality of music that I dance to (remember those hissy tapes?). So over the years I have tried to find the original music wherever possible – and that led me to developing “Circles of Music” which is a catalogue that sources CDs that are not available in mainstream stores. It is also why I spend hours working with dance teachers like Yves Moreau and Matti Goldschmidt to source recordings of traditional Bulgarian, Balkan and Israeli tunes and produce the notation booklets.
Why is so little written about Circle Dancing in English? Until very recently with the advent of June Watts’ book there was almost nothing. People kept asking me about various aspects of the dance – so I collate and produce booklets of articles which I think people will find of interest (The Dancing Circles – volumes 3 & 4 are the latest).
You need to be a workaholic to fit it all in – there are simply just not enough days in the week. “Why are you tired?” I was once asked, “You only teach dance.” I smiled as a reply.
It most certainly is extremely tiring at times; it most definitely is all consuming; it is greatly enhanced by having a partner either fully supportive or equally committed to it; it is certainly more than simply teaching the dances.
The handful of us who do teach Circle dance for a living are all immensely fortunate to be so fully immersed in a network which offers such a fantastic medium and such warm and open hearted people to work with – but we are not ‘lucky’ – we have worked very hard for it.
Much is Serendipity – being in the right place at the right time – but there lies another story!!!
This article appeared in Grapevine, Winter 2006
