Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I adored my dad.
I was born during the War, born in 1941.
I didn't meet my father until I was five.
And I really absolutely adored him when he came back from the War.
And he said to me... I was not good at school.
I got through my 11+ but I was really pretty hopeless.
And I remember my dad saying to me,
'I don't mind what you do, be a coal miner, but, David,
be the best coal miner.'
I knew what I wanted to be, I knew I wanted to be relevant,
I knew I wanted to be alive and I knew I wanted to be
one of those people that moved life along and altered things.
Not somebody who sat on their bottom and wanted the status quo to survive
because it suited me.
And I think it's been the dominant theme of my life
and actually to an extent it's been dominant theme of yours.
Do you have a memory of the very first time
that the notion of being a dancer sprang into your mind?
No, I really don't.
I remember dancing down the street a lot.
I vaguely remember my first time on stage but I was singing, not dancing
and I was three.
So, no, it was always there, it was always there
as something I was going to do.
And at what point did someone say to you that you were really rather good?
That happened, actually those exact words, really quite late.
But the implied message came when my teacher...
I was brought up in a place called Skegness
which is on the Lincolnshire coast.
It's not known for producing ballet dancers.
But there's a very good ballet school there with an incredible teacher.
And she decided that I was going to audition for the Royal Ballet School
and that was the first time she'd ever sent anyone to audition there
and she didn't do it again for another 30 years.
And it dawned on me then that that was a bit different
and that that must mean I was rather good.
But I do recall a moment actually when I decided that by focusing
I could be a better dancer than I had been.
I recall a moment when I took the conscious decision
that I could either fall about in class or I could not fall about.
And from that day on people started to notice me.
So there was a moment and I was about 12.
Now you've arrived at the Royal Ballet School.
What did you encounter? A competitive environment?
Were the others better than you expected?
Were you able to hold your own from day one?
I felt most of all, and I was only 11,
but I felt this is the place to be to achieve what I want to achieve.
I felt in an environment of like minded people.
I felt if there was a road to get where I wanted to go,
that was the road and I was on it.
So I felt immediately at home, I was never homesick.
I loved it.
I was very ebullient, I used to jump around,
get told off for being too cheerful about it all.
And the quality of teaching?
The Royal Ballet School at the time did not have a method of teaching.
There's four or five codified training methods.
The Russians have a very clear one called the Vaganova System
and you see it in the way they dance.
The Royal Ballet School didn't have that.
But it had a series of individuals
who many of them could trace their heritage
right back to the beginnings of British ballet.
So people who had worked with de Valois
who was the founding mother of British ballet,
ballet in this country.
So there was a great sense of heritage
within the texture of what was done.
There was a great link to the profession
because these were people who had been dancers.
They were not jobbing teachers.
So I could sense in my teachers this place I wanted to go,
that was a very visible link.
When you were at ballet school, were you articulate
and did they encourage that?
They probably called it outspoken in those days.
It was a mix. I had one ballet teacher
who gave me a really brilliant piece of advice
when I was about 13.
She said I could be so much better
and I thought that was a really odd thing to say
but she didn't mean better than the others,
she meant the best you can be.
And it was really the first time I'd differentiated between
better in a competitive sense, better than the others
but actually better for myself.
And she encouraged me to read
and she'd make me write critiques of novels
and she'd take them away
and she would challenge me with things that I should see
or read or think about.
And it was really her that gave me the confidence
to continue on that quest
because there were a few people
sadly saying it's not your job to think, it's your job to dance.