TRAVELING ON - - - - -

     Crowded, full beyond measure, my day's flowed. I worked with a zeal and passion "what comes next" was totally mine to command. The studio became my home, you know, "away from home". My poor mother was caught between her unsure pleasure at my decision to study ballet, and her fear that her strange son was putting too much energy into something out of her ken, and therefore out of her ability to imagine it would, or could, contain any security for me. My father said very little, in fact I really had no idea of what he made of me at the time. I believe he was a wise man, as he was good man; he left it up to me to find the place where I belonged. He too had his dreams, and I, and my brother Bill had been worked into them before our independence showed itself. My mom and I were very close. She was a rare gentle soul, one who would listen to the meaning behind the words she heard from the mouths of those she loved. No, not so, saying that limits her, she listened with her heart to all who unburdened themselves to her. She told me this: my father, a carpenter by trade, longed for a business of his own, and that above the door of this business he envisioned would be a sign that read - "William Wales & Sons, Cabinet Makers". Eventually he did open a cabinet making shop, but with only one name on the shingle above the door. Brother Bill became a sailor and I became a dancer! But he was proud of his sons. He had achieved at least a part of his dream and wished for us that we would find at least a part of ours.
   Slowly--read "painfully" in there--my abilities as a dancer improved, not as fast
as I would have liked, and certainly not as much as was needed for my first professional stage performance. At this point I have to admit that it was the lack, the severe lack of males willing to be called dancers that led to my "first". The attitude at the time was that dancing - stage dancing - was far to feminine a thing for a real guy; a Nancy boy's pastime, "real men" played football. You wonder what the mind set of those guys was when everyone of them had a secret desire to be either Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly, and wow the ladies with their smooth and classy moves. My how times have changed, consider all those TV reality shows with thousands of "macho" males lining up outside of television studios hoping for an audition, a chance to show the world how fantastically they too can trip the light fantastic! In my day you were heading for a look of either pity or disgust on the face of your listener if you divulged the dirty little secret that you were a dancer. Me, I loved saying it! I’d tell it to anyone who asked what I did. Then again, I'm funny that way!
     Anyway, at this stage I was not a dancer, I was an impostor who stood at
the barre, sweating heavily, and hurting. Then suddenly, along comes a fairy godmother waving her magic wand in one hand and carrying a white cane stripped with red in the other. Well, how else did it happen that I found myself in a professional musical comedy production? “What”, you ask, “about the dearth of male dancers? You know, you remind me, “impossible to find. .  hmmm?” Oh, yeah, that. Well, I guess it did have something to do with it. Anyway, the Theatre Under the Star’s famous Hollywood choreographer needed another male dancer for a forthcoming production of "The Great Waltz", so they went calling at the various dance schools. Bastions of last resort, what? Ray Moller, and another of Kay's advanced students, Bob Van Norman, were already in the cast, both having done previous summer shows with TUTS, and the recruiters were now scraping the dregs from the bottom of the dance school barrels, and in desperation conscripted me for the job. I looked properly terrified when informed of what was expected of me, but went along with it. Hey, hey, don't get me wrong, I was as blind as that fairy godmother, and besides, no one had told me I was the last of the dregs.
     Of the different numbers in the show the only one I remember is the big waltz near
the end, the “Great Waltz”. Of all the things I did not know how to do the very first was how to waltz - you know, 1 2 3 - 1 2 3, and oh how it showed. My poor partner. How and why did they put me with her? I was green behind the ears personified, and she, oh my God, she had been one of the famous baby ballerinas of the Colonel de Basil Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo! Betty Bligh! She loathed me, to say the least, and she let me know it. Over and over. I’m sure - as she pushed and pulled me through the number - she prayed I would stumble into the orchestra pit and disappear. I don't believe she walked without a limp for ages after the show finished, and I blush still at the memory of those 10 performances in 1948!
    I think an intelligent person would have decided at this point that dancing was for
other more capable folk, and that being young meant there were many other, and much safer careers to consider. But quashed I was not, I was even more determined than ever to prove I could do it. I was counting on a ‘heroes are made not born’ strategy, and fully intended to make it work.
     There is a lovely ending to the ballerina and the dolt story. Three years later, after
that fateful waltz, and much improved by hard work, a scholarship, and two seasons of summer theatre with TUTS, I went with Ray to take some classes at the North Vancouver School of Dancing. Betty Bligh had recently opened her own studio under that name and Ray having raved about how great her classes were suggested I go with him to a few. Her name alone caused the sweat of fear to flow, but  intrigued, and convinced by him that I shouldn't let the episode at TUTS sway me I went, and was knocked out by the class and how she handled her students. She was truly an inspired and inspiring teacher. She also had a bad memory, or a lapse of memory had wiped me clear out of her mind after the fiasco of the "Waltz", because she collapsed in amazement when I told her that I was her hopeless partner of three years previously. The outcome of which I gained one of the dearest friends a guy could wish for, and one of the most, if not the most inspiring teachers I ever studied under. She had a wonderful sense of humor, but confessed she almost lost it forever during "The Great Waltz". Now, decades later, whenever the scent of "Tweed"--her favorite perfume--drifts in the air, or I see, as I pass by a cosmetic counter, the distinctive box that proclaims it, the memory of Betty, and her so valued friendship, sweeps over me. She was the one who truly nurtured whatever talent I may possess, and I owe her more than can ever be repaid.