Gotta Dance

During the long winter nights I have been fantasising about my daughter’s future stage career. It’s not the thrill of the red carpet I am imagining, with Mary decked out (but not head to toe) in vintage Lanvin (say emerald green satin from Spring Summer 2004) with lilac suede sandals taking her up to six foot three and a smile brighter and whiter than flashbulbs.

No, I don't want my daughter to desert me for Hollywood, regardless of her talent. I picture her in a more modest setting, still the star, but in a theatre draped with faded red velvet in a sea side town. There are lots of proud relatives in the audience, armed with chocolates and flowers. Mary’s playing the homely peasant girl, all dungarees and freckles, whose natural taste and good manners mean we are hardly surprised at all when it is revealed at the eleventh hour, that she is by birth a princess. There is much singing and dancing involved. Mary’s in the cow shed cheering up the animals with her sure-footed American teletone tap routines. Mary, in the ball scene, is pirouetting across the dance floor, on point, towards the prince.

My husband walks past me whistling Mrs Worthington, but today was our first ballet lesson and we won't be stopped. Mary’s first dance class was in the top ten best experiences of my life. The teacher was an angel called Angelina who adored the girls and introduced them to the art of ballet in the most playful and imaginative ways. You have to be extremely careful with dance teachers. Many are stuck in the nineteen fifties, yelling ‘Pull in those disgusting fat tummies’ to three year olds and referring to toes that aren’t pointed as ‘bad, bad, naughty toes.’ You have to yank children out of these classes straight into the psychiatrist’s office.

When all the girls had curtsied good-bye to Angelina four or five of them skipped into the next-door cafe for enormous bacon sandwiches, still in their ballet clothes, hooting with laughter. Afterwards, my daughter and I took a bus to Gandolphi on Marylebone Road to get her kitted out. This is a shop I visited regularly as a child. At one point when I was attending four dance classes a week, I owned nine leotards including a glossy scoop neck turquoise number which I thought the height of sophistication. This was shortly before I reached the sad point where an excellent memory for the steps, regular practice and sheer enthusiasm were no longer enough, without natural ability.

As nearly all the other girls wore pink I suggested to Mary it would be rather chic to have blue dance wear. We picked out a short sleeved, sky blue, Royal Academy of Dancing approved, high cotton-content leotard. We also found a little pink Swiss overskirt with white dots on it and a pale blue one in the same material. ‘Is it her first ballet clothes?’ the shop assistant inquired in hushed respectful tones as we emerged from the changing rooms. I nodded. She held her breath. It was a huge moment for us all. Mary stood in front of the mirror for a second and then darted round the shop fingering the fairy dresses and the tutus, the ladybird umbrellas and the teddy bears, for in order to survive this dance shop has had to broaden its appeal and is now a more general Mecca for little girls. The window displays are even crammed with boiled sweets. Two pairs of ballet socks in an odd, elastoplast shade completed our purchases. We walked home hand in hand and Mary was quiet but what I kept thinking was how much I love my life.