DANZ QUARTERLY No 4 June 2006

LILY’S LEGACY
Dancing in Dunedin 1917-2006
Recollections of some notable Otago Dance Teachers

by Lyne Pringle

My grandmother was a dancer, her name was Linda McDonald and she taught my Dad to tap dance, he used to practice in the kitchen in his plastic sandals. Lately I have been on a mission to gather more information about photos I have of her dancing in Dunedin competitions from 1919 to 1921.

She was a winner; I have the medals and certificates to prove it. One a gold swastika “an Indian good luck charm” she told me. A curious choice for the recognition of dancing achievement in early 20th century Dunedin don’t you think? She never wore it after Hitler appropriated the symbol for his own purposes. The person who made the decision to award this particular medal is long gone. So is the generation which had a direct connection to the beginning of the competitions in 1917; consequently, I am left to trawl archives and talk to the living about their memories.

Secondly, I have been able to trace my own dance lineage through my first teachers back to Lily. I have come to appreciate the very special relationship I had with my early teachers and my dance whakapapa as I rekindle the connection to them.

Dunedin has a rich dance history that is continued by the unique and fabulous teachers profiled below. They represent a sample of the dedicated and passionate dance practitioners who are replicated in many communities all over New Zealand, holding in common the RAD thread as well as the creative hot bed of Dancing Competitions. Their impact on the bodies and imaginations of young people cannot be underestimated. Each year they choreograph at least 1 hour of original dance broken up into 2 minute gems for competing students; barefoot, interpretive, classical, national, character and demi character are the categories that have been handed down since the very beginning.

Lily Stevens

One character pops up whenever I talk to teachers past and present who were associated with ‘the comps’ – Lily Stevens - an inimitable, historic figure. I remember her - small, intense and passionate - she was a spinster who had dedicated her life to ‘the dance’. Lily was always in the front row of the Regent or His Majesty’s Theatres whenever there was a dance event in town. At the end of a performance she would rise to her feet, all 5ft of her, and shower the stage with flowers as a token of her rapture. Nobody else in Dunedin was that colourful.

Her genius is contained in 12 boxes in Dunedin’s Hocken Library. So far I have sifted through three of those boxes which contain scrapbooks, music scores, choreographic notes, diaries and memorabilia covering several decades of her output as a teacher and choreographer.

Her interest in all forms of dance was vast; she visited Europe and South America on numerous occasions to gather dances for the National Character section of the competitions. As each year drew to a close, Lily would choreograph a huge recital for her students – apparently collapsing afterwards into a state of nervous exhaustion. Nothing was held back and this accounts for her eminence. By gathering information and attending courses wherever she could, Lily also introduced the Royal Academy of Dancing syllabus to young aspiring dancers in Dunedin. Her teacher was Mrs May Wyatt, but the word is she was largely self-taught after being inspired by an early dance event.

Two baroque strands connect me to Lily. She danced with my grandmother. From photos and people’s stories I have ascertained that they introduced dancing en pointe to Dunedin as well as a long and rich lineage of dancing competitions – the focus of my recent Ministry of Culture and Heritage oral history project.

Dawn Robinson

I have vivid memories of my first dance class at the Green Island kindergarten with Dawn – I had to wear my knickers and a singlet but didn’t mind a bit as I instantly fell in love. Speaking to Dawn recently I realised that the dance training I undertook at six with this gifted teacher was as much about the body as it was a ‘training of the imagination’. Dawn credits Lily Stevens with igniting her imagination and creativity as a child.

Dawn has a long association with the RAD, both as a teacher and in la ter years as a manager for the programme in Otago. She is also a musician; we had the added bonus of her playing and selecting scores for our dances. In partnership with Eli Gray Smith – a very famous accompanist known all over New Zealand for his playing at RAD exams – Dawn would create music magic at the comps: “OK Eli we need a storm here – that’s it keep playing a little bit longer” Dawn would say as she stood beside the piano in the Green Island Civic Centre. Eli was a master of making sense of cut up bits of music and improvisation. “It is sad that all music is recorded these days” Dawn laments.

She remembers Twilight, a barefoot dance she had choreographed for me forty years before; it followed in the tradition of dances choreographed to natural themes in a Grecian style, a direct ode to Isadora Duncan. Dawn has retired from the RAD and teaching now, but she continues to choreograph and perform for the Outram Musical Society and the Country Women’s Institute.

Glenys Scandrett

During my research Glenys drove up from Invercargill, where she runs a dance school, to meet with me. She was my second teacher and very different to Dawn, but they formed a really solid partnership to make a bigger school in Green Island – I remember a fantastic orange piano which said a lot about the energy of the studio. Ian Gray Smith used to play this piano for classes and for practices for competitions. I realise now Glenys was too flamboyant for little conservative Green Island. She was unlike anybody I had ever experienced - strong, dynamic and probably misplaced - a ‘butterfly in a cage’. Her training took her to study at the famous Borovansky School in Melbourne. It was tough place for the young Dunedin teenager and eventually Glenys returned to Dunedin.

I remember the outrageous concerts Glenys used to choreograph at the Mayfair Theatre – they shocked the natives; themes of drug addiction and Jimmy Hendrix soundtracks were hardly commonplace for dance school recitals in Dunedin in the late 60s, early 70s. Once again I’m sure it was great compost for my burgeoning imagination.

Eventually Glenys cut loose from the restraints of a suburban life and dance school and led a bohemian existence for a time. In Invercargill she contributed to the colour of the community and recounts choreographing a dance for little kids dressed as penguins at the Bluff Oyster Festival, “The wind was blowing so hard – you know the infamous Bluff weather – that the little kids were literally being blown off the stage. It was hilarious”.

Glenys has 80 dances to make this year and she doesn’t know quite know how she will do it. “I recycle some dances and have perfected a process whereby I can teach from sitting down, the corners of the room are numbered and we have a system”. Retirement beckons as Glenys nears 70; she would like to paint and do some writing and move back to Dunedin. When I ask her what inspires her to choreograph she says “movement, all movement” and proceeds to describe the movement she sees in the exposed brick chimney of the room we are talking in.

Chris Rout

Christine Ogg (as she was then) and I haven’t seen each other for over 30 years. As we look at each other dancing together in a photograph I am struck by a peculiar sensation – we are no longer those little girls. However there are elements that are the same, we are tethered through this photograph to the past. In the grown up Chris I recognize the girl I used to dance with.

In a small studio below her house in St Clair, which overlooks spectacular cliffs, Chris started up a small dance school. For nearly 20 years she has found the balance between working as a primary school teacher and running a school four nights a week and most of Saturday. She strikes me as a very organised and dedicated person. Her grown up daughters went through the school, which she now runs from a local hall, taking her students up to Elementary level in the RAD system.

Each year she enters students in the Dunedin competitions, sometimes competing in other centres. She finds her inspiration from a wide music selection and doesn’t prepare dances before she gives a private lesson but rather allows the inspiration to come in the moment.

Robyn Sinclair

I met up with Robyn after a long Saturday of teaching from 10.30 – 4.30. Robyn remembers Lily coming to rehearsals when she was a student at the Dunedin Dance Centre. “She used to come and watch and take notes and must have been well into her 70’s by then, it was not long before she died – I think she still wanted to be involved and helpful.”
Robyn inherited, from Jennie Kjelkaard and Jacqui Dumont, the biggest dance school in Dunedin, with 300 students including community Yoga classes. She has been teaching full time for 18 years in a grand old building, home to the school for decades.

She danced in competitions and encourages her students to enter not for the competitive element but rather for the experience. When I arrived at the studio a senior student was whipping through her routine for her Advanced Jazz exam – a sophisticated and polished routine that she had been encouraged to choreograph. Robyn is committed to nurturing the creativity of her students; in her annual concert students present their own choreography which is appraised by invited guests. Robyn strikes me as an insightful and generous teacher.

Private studio dance teachers following in the footsteps of Lily Stevens hold a special place in the lives of young people. They train hundreds of students with dedication and inspiration. From my personal experience they have a profound effect on the development of a grace and imagination that can be linked back to a dance history full of fecundity.

Lyne acknowledges funding for this research from the Ministry of Culture and Heritage through the Australia Sesquicentennial Gift Trust for Awards in Oral History.

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