Blissful childhood
When I was a toddler we moved across the River Seven to Bristol.
It was then, at the age of five, while on a brief spell at a boarding school in Tynemouth, Devon, that I was initiated into the Kingdom of Practical Creativity. I learned to weave baskets, darn socks and crochet string bags. That’s right, at the age of five!
When I returned home I discovered a whole new environment.
We had moved again to a smallholding, in the heart of the Mendip Hills, in Somerset. I had an idyllic childhood – spending hours and hours with my four-legged and feathered friends, cycling to school, playing fearlessly in the fields, picking fruit from our orchards, singing descants in the church choir, creating decorations with flowers or paper for village fetes and learning violin and piano from the vicar’s wife.
Time to go to senior school
I entered the local, Quaker run, boarding school as a day pupil. It was at Sidcot School that, apart from the general curriculum, I learned ballroom dance, country dance, set up my regular disco dance evenings, continued my studies in violin and piano, joined the school orchestra, formed my own orchestra, wrote my first play 'Hari-Kiri', joined the Scouts "Dyb, dyb, dyb! - Do Your Best!", and got my very first laugh in the play 'The Man Who Came to Dinner'.
We had a busy art department too. Therefore, when at home, I was untiringly betrothed to my painting, sewing, puppet theatre construction and wiring our house for sound.
Major credit must be handed to both my parents for stimulating my aptitude for over-all life skills, the natural world, music appreciation, cookery and clothing. Truthfully, they never stood in my way regarding any ideas I may have had for a career ahead of me.
So the time came to leave the nest
With a future career initially focused on costume design, I left Sidcot at the age of sixteen and became a residential student at Dartington College of Arts.
Now, in the beautiful countryside of Devon with an awesome Henry Moore sculpture in the gardens, my arts education was to start in earnest.
I studied an assortment of subjects: Painting, drawing, fabric dyeing and ceramics etc. It was here, at Dartington, that I was able to continue my education on the violin in the very gifted hands of Colin Sauer/Peter Carter – musicians of the celebrated Dartington String Quartet.
Art in Motion
It was at art college that it became apparent to me that I loved creating live drama in the form of movement and, as a result, I started my solo improvised dance enactments - Isadora Duncan springs to mind. Knowledged Improvisation is still an integral part of my choreography and live performance to this day.
Eventually, the magnetism of dance became too strong for me to resist and, as I had no previous training in ballet or contemporary dance, I was homeward bound once more to Somerset; It was then that I joined Elizabeth West’s Bristol School of Dancing to learn the very basics of movement.
The Royal Ballet School
Ultimately, after being offed a place at the Turkish Ballet School in Istanbul, and The Paris Opera Ballet School, I was lucky enough to be given a place at the UK’s Royal Ballet School in central London.
Later, while still at the Royal, I was able to take external classes and thus benefited greatly from the experience of superlative ballet talents such as the exponent of the Tamara Karsavina syllabus - Rachel Cameron, ex-Hungarian Ballet’s - Maria Fay and the vocal expertise of the outstanding singing teacher - Marion Lowe.
Even back then, I was passionately writing poetry and non-linear plays. Back on home turf in Bristol, these were very kindly typed out for me by my father’s sympathetic secretary.
Progressing further with my theatrical education
I move to Stockholm, Sweden where I was lucky enough to discover Lia Schubert’s Balettakademien. It was with Lia that I developed my supplementary dance techniques, egged on by teachers such as the brilliant Aaron Gerard who, moreover, taught The Royal Swedish Ballet.