Showing the benefits of ballet

Press, 20 May 1987, Page 23

Showing the benefits of ballet

“Up, up, up ... I said up and you went down ... now if you don’t get this step I’ll come across sind whack you.” . The big voice comes from a small body that seems to be never still. Shirley Jones is hardly breathing heavily towards the end of a day of ballet classes. Many of her students, some only a sixth of her age, are sweating from the routines she has put them through. She says it is ballet that has kept her fit, through 48 years. She has been dancing for 37 of them, teaching for 23, and examining for 14. In Christchurch Hast week for a Cecchetti seminar, the Australian teacher helped South Island students with their technique for forthcoming examinations. Shirley Jones learnt the Cecchetti method from Madame Lucie Saranova, who was a pupil of Enrico Cecchetti. ”1 learnt It almost first hand.” She began dancing with the National Theatre in Australia. “Then we danced for three months and they said ’Right, see you all next year.’ Then wie only did the major centres and that was it” Her professional dancing career stopped when she was 33 and about to have her first baby. "I was still dancing at the top then and had left having a family until later. When I made the break there was no real chance of going back. I had three sons in four years. Once you have made the break it is virtually impossible to get back.” The young Shirley Jones was attracted to ballet because "a friend learnt. I thought it was wonderful.” She remembers

Madame Saranova as a strict disciplinarian. “She would smack us if we got it wrong. I don’t do that with my students though I give them a good push at times.’’ It is obvious that Shirley Jones* Christchurch pupils regard her with the same fondness as she did Madame Saranova. She is impressed by their enthusiasm. and dedication. Christchurch has been a regular teaching venue for the dancer. She has twice been among the visiting tutors at the Christchurch Ballet Society’s residential summer school at Lincoln College. Competition for places in the ballet world is much fiercer than when she was starting. “There used to be 20 to 30 people turn up when there were auditions. Now 500 girls turn up for 20 places in a production. It is much harder to get in.” She prefers dancing to teaching but loves her pupils because they share her love of the dance form. She runs her own ballet school in Melbourne. There is room at the school, she says, for the dancer going right to the top and the youngsters who want to learn only for a few years. Ballet benefits them all, she says. “My three boys have learnt from me and one is a champion footballer, one a swimmer. Ballet is good for them. I encourage any little girl to do ballet. She may not end up a ballerina but she will end up with a good body. “Children will not pull their tummies in, and stand up straight unless they are reminded twice a week at class. Ballet really is very good for them.” She is a living testimony to that.