She was a prima ballerina, in her carriage and sense of the dramatic. Not to say that she was a drama queen — she had a lovely sense of humour and a generous heart — but everything I know about florid overdone stage bows, I learned from that woman. Révérence, the curtsy that traditionally ends a ballet class, was a grand affair with her, as you made your bows to the audience, those in the center, those stage left, those stage right, those poor souls up in the balcony who spent their hard-earned savings on tickets to see art, a gesture to the conductor, the gracious acceptance of flowers from the younger girl who ran out on stage to give them to you, breaking off a bud to present to your partner — it could go on for minutes at a time.
Many teachers turn a blind eye or actively encourage their students in anorexic behavior, eternally pursuing the insanely thin body now considered desirable in classical ballet. When a fellow dancer my age kept talking about how she needed to lose five more pounds, Joyce and her daughter Lyndette took her aside and told her point-blank she needed to gain weight — that she would dance better with a healthy body than a skinny one.
Joyce and Lyndette kept me in ballet for another seven years after I had left my old studio with the intention of quitting entirely.
And after I graduated from high school, after I went away to college, I would come back and attend the daytime adult class my mother had started taking. I still do. And I remember one incident particularly, that encapsulates the kind of teacher Joyce was.
I had only just mastered the fouetté before I stopped dancing regularly, but I had always loved it. After the adult class ended, when everyone else was heading for the dressing room, I would go into the center of the floor, start myself with a pirouette, and then do fouettés until I fell off my leg. Which generally took only three or four turns at best, because I was never on my center enough to stay up.
One day, after Joyce watched me do this for a few moments, she told me that I was turning my palms down when I opened my arms. “You’ve got to turn them up,” she said.
The direction of my palms was the least of my problems; I just didn’t have the glutes any more to keep my working leg high enough, not to mention I’d always been crap at spotting and now my hair was long enough that I had to keep it in a braid instead of a bun, which shot my center all to hell. But whatever.
Fifth position. Tendu, place, pirouette —
Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam.
Oh, I fell off my leg eventually. But I was on, three hundred percent better than I’d been before she made the comment about my hands.
Lyndette’s the one who broke me of the atrocious habits left by the neglect of my old studio. I owe my still-excellent feet to her. Joyce, though, had that special gift for seeing the one tiny thing you never thought had anything to do with your problems, but in truth was the key to them. Palms down took my energy into the ground; palms up centered me, straightened my spine, lifted my ribcage, and brought everything into line.
She was an inspired teacher and a wonderful woman. She fought off breast cancer twice, encephalitis, countless other health problems that would have dropped a lesser woman ten times over. I don’t know how old she was when she died today — it used to be that even her daughter did not know — and I’m sad for the way her health and mind deteriorated after she could no longer teach even the adult class. Ballet was her life, and when it went away, so did she. But I will always tell the story of the day she turned my palms up and made it all work, and I will always remember her with love.
