Darcey Bussell Favourite Ballet Stories Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Introduction

  I Don’t Want to Dance! by Bel Mooney

  Mr George by Jamila Gavin

  Mega-Nuisance by Geraldine Kaye

  Hi There, Supermouse by Jean Ure

  The King and Us by Jhanna N. Malcolm

  Panic! by Antonia Barber

  Boys Don’t Do Ballet – Do They? by Vivian French

  The Hookywalker Dancers by Margaret Mahy

  A Dream of Sadler’s Wells by Lorna Hill

  Ballet for Drina by Jean Estoril

  Come a Stranger by Cynthia Voigt

  The Mysterious Miss Minning by Harriet Castor

  The Rose of Puddle Fratrum by Joan Aiken

  One Foot on the Ground by Jean Richardson

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Darcey Bussell, everyone’s favourite ballerina, has put together a collection of her favourite ballet stories that will delight budding ballerinas everywhere. With contributions from: Joan Aiken, Jean Estoril, Vivian French, Lorna Hill, Geraldine Kaye, Margaret Mahy, Jhanna N. Malcolm, Bel Mooney, Jean Richardson, Jean Ure and Cynthia Voigt. Plus specially commissioned NEW stories from: Jamila Gavin, Antonia Barber and Harriet Castor.

  Favourite

  Ballet Stories

  Chosen by

  Darcey Bussell

  Introduction

  I’M NOT SURE of my earliest memory of ballet dancing; it may have been the playing of some notes on a piano, or the fiddling with the chiffon of my skirt, or dancing in the kitchen at home. But I do remember, exactly, how much I enjoyed reading a well-written story of the theatre or ballet when I was young and how they caught my imagination and often inspired me.

  Now, I thought I would tell you my own story, about the day I first wore pointe shoes. I remember it as clearly as if it were yesterday. I was lucky enough to be attending an early Saturday morning ballet class with my friends at the Mercury Theatre in Notting Hill Gate, then home of the Ballet Rambert. I was about ten years old, and I recall sitting on the floor putting a white animal’s wool in my first ever pair of pointe shoes. They smelt so new and special, a canvas and leather smell. The shoes looked very beautiful, too, with their pale-pink satin outside, and they looked so delicate. I was terribly excited and so were my friends and we gingerly eased our feet into them. Our teacher instructed us on how to wrap our ribbons around our ankles. I stood on pointe and it hurt a lot! I clutched on to the barre for support and wobbled like a young deer standing for the first time. I didn’t think it was going to be as hard as this. I so wanted it to look as easy as the pictures of the famous dancers in their grand poses. However, as I looked at my feet in the mirror, I thought I saw a glimpse of how a professional ballerina looked. I loved that idea! If only I’d known of all the hard work to come. That moment was magical for me and I shall remember it for the rest of my life.

  Theatre life has its ups and downs, but I enjoy the hard work and discipline required to make any theatre company successful. The stage is always full of drama, passion and challenges and as a result exciting performances always occur.

  Many of the stories in this collection reflect the first impressions of young people being exposed to this different world and tell of an important moment in a young person’s discovery of dance, and some accurately reflect my own experiences, such as my first visit to the Royal Opera House when I was a student at White Lodge, the Royal Ballet School. I really do hope you enjoy them.

  Darcey Bussell

  I Don’t Want to Dance!

  by Bel Mooney

  KITTY’S COUSIN MELISSA had started ballet classes.

  ‘Why don’t you go as well, dear?’ suggested Kitty’s mum.

  ‘I don’t want to dance!’ growled Kitty, picking up her biro to draw a skull and crossbones on her hand. Mum sighed, looking at Kitty’s tousled hair, dirty nails, and the dungarees all covered in soil – from where Kitty had been playing Crawling Space Creatures with William from next door.

  ‘I think it would be nice for you,’ she said, ‘because you’d learn . . . you’d learn . . . Well, dancing makes you strong.’

  ‘No,’ said Kitty – and that was that.

  But when Kitty’s big brother Daniel came home from school and heard about the plan, he laughed. ‘Kitty go to ballet!’ he screamed. ‘That’s a joke! She’d dance like a herd of elephants!’

  Just then Dad came in, and smiled. ‘Well, I think she’d dance like Muhammad Ali.’

  ‘Who’s he?’ Kitty asked.

  ‘He was a boxer,’ grinned Dad.

  That did it. If there was one thing Kitty hated it was being teased (although to tell the truth she didn’t mind teasing other people!). ‘Right! I’ll show you!’ she yelled.

  So on Saturday afternoon Kitty was waiting outside the hall with the other girls (and two boys) from the ballet class. Mum had taken her shopping that morning, and Kitty had chosen a black leotard, black tights and black ballet shoes. Now she saw that all the other girls were in pink. She felt like an ink blot.

  Mum went off for coffee with Auntie Susan, leaving Kitty with Melissa and her friend, Emily. They both had their hair done up in a bun, and wore little short net skirts over their leotards. They looked Kitty up and down in a very snooty way.

  ‘You could never be a ballet dancer, Kitty, ’cos you’re too clumsy,’ said Melissa.

  ‘And you’re too small,’ said Emily.

  Kitty glared at them. ‘I don’t want to dance anyway,’ she said. ‘I’m only coming to this boring old class to please Mum.’

  But she felt horrid inside, and she wished – oh, how she wished – she was playing in the garden with William. Pirates. Explorers. Cowboys. Crawling Space Creatures. Those were the games they played and Kitty knew they suited her more than ballet class.

  She put both hands up to her head and tore out the neat bunches Mum had insisted on. That’s better – that’s more like me, she thought.

  Miss Francis, the ballet teacher, was very pretty and graceful, with long black hair in a knot on top of her head. She welcomed Kitty and asked if she had done ballet before.

  ‘No,’ said Kitty in a small, sulky voice.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Miss Francis. ‘You’ll soon catch up with the others. Stand in front of me and watch my feet. Now, class, make rows . . . heels together . . . First position!’

  Kitty put her heels together, and tried to put her feet in a straight line, like Miss Francis. But it was very hard. She bent her knees – that made it easier.

  There was a giggle from behind.

  ‘Look at Kitty,’ whispered Emily. ‘She looks like a duck!’

  Miss Francis didn’t hear. ‘Good!’ she called. ‘Now, do you all remember the first position for your arms? Let’s see if we can put it all together . . .’

  Kitty looked at the girls each side of her, then at Miss Francis – and put her arms in the air. She stretched up, but was thinking so hard about her arms she forgot what her feet were doing. Then she thought about her feet, and forgot to look up at her arms.

  There was an explosion of giggles from behind.

  ‘Kitty looks like a tree in a storm,’ whispered Melissa.

  ‘Or like a drowning duck!’ said Emily.

  ‘Shh, girls!’ called Miss Francis with a frown.

  And so it went on. Kitty struggled to copy all the positions, but she was always a little bit behind. Once, when Miss Francis went over to speak to the lady playing the piano, she turned round quickly an
d stuck her tongue out at Melissa and Emily.

  Of course, that only made them giggle more. And some of the other children joined in. It wasn’t that they wanted to be mean to Kitty – not really. It was just that she looked so funny, with her terrible frown, and her hair sticking out all over the place. And they thought she felt she was better than all of them. But of course the truth was that the horrible feeling inside Kitty was growing so fast she was afraid it would burst out of her eyes.

  Everybody seemed so clever and skilful – except her.

  ‘I am an ink blot,’ she thought miserably.

  It so happened that Miss Francis was much more than pretty and graceful; she was a very good teacher. She saw Kitty’s face and heard the giggles, and knew exactly what was going on. So she clapped her hands and told all the children to sit in a circle.

  ‘Now, we’re going to do some free dancing,’ she said, ‘so I want some ideas from you all. What could we all be . . . ?’

  Lots of hands shot up, because the class enjoyed this. ‘Let’s do a flower dance,’ called Melissa.

  ‘Birds,’ suggested Emily.

  ‘Let’s pretend we’re trees . . . and the hurricane comes,’ called out one of the boys.

  ‘I want to be a flower,’ Melissa insisted.

  Miss Francis looked at Kitty. ‘What about you? You haven’t said anything,’ she said with a smile.

  Kitty shook her head.

  ‘Come on, Kitty, I know you must have an idea. Tell me what we can be when we dance. Just say whatever comes into your head.’

  ‘Crawling Space Creatures,’ said Kitty.

  The children began to laugh. But Miss Francis held up her hand. ‘What a good idea! Tell us a little bit about them first, so we can imagine them . . .’

  ‘Well, me and William play it in the garden, and we live on this planet which is all covered with jungle, and we’re really horrible-looking things, with no legs, just tentacles like octopuses. And so we move about by crawling, but since we like the food that grows at the top of the bushes we sometimes have to rear up, and that’s very hard, see. And we have to be careful, ’cos there’s these birds that eat us if they see us, so we have to keep down. Sometimes William is the birds, and tries to get me . . .’

  ‘All right, children – you’re all Crawling Space Creatures. We’ll see if we can get some spooky, space-like music on the piano . . .’

  The lady playing the piano smiled and nodded.

  So they began. Most of the children loved the idea, but Melissa and Emily and two other girls looked very cross and bored.

  ‘Down on the floor, girls!’ called Miss Francis.

  Kitty had a wonderful time. She listened to the music, and imagined the strange planet, and twisted her body into all sorts of fantastic shapes. After a few minutes Miss Francis told the others to stop. ‘All watch Kitty!’ she said.

  So the children made a circle, and Kitty did her own dance. She lay on the floor and twisted and turned, waving her arms in time to the music. Sometimes she would crouch, then rear up, as if reaching for strange fruit, only to duck down in terror, waving her ‘tentacles’, as the savage birds wheeled overhead . . .

  At last the music stopped, and all the children clapped. Kitty looked up shyly. She had forgotten where she was. She had lost herself in her dance.

  When the lesson was over, Miss Francis beckoned Kitty to come over to the piano. None of the children noticed; they were all crowding round the door to meet their mothers.

  ‘Now, Kitty,’ said Miss Francis quietly, ‘what do you think you’ve learned about ballet today?’

  ‘It’s hard,’ said Kitty.

  ‘Well, yes, it is hard. But what else? What about your space dance?’

  ‘That was fun!’

  ‘Because it was you?’

  Kitty nodded.

  ‘Well, we’ll do lots of made-up dances too, and you’ll find you can be lots of things – if you let yourself. That’s what modern ballet is all about, you know. Now take this book, and look at the pictures, and you can practise all the positions for next week . . . You are coming next week?’

  Kitty nodded happily, and went off to find Mum. Outside in the hall Melissa and Emily glared at her.

  ‘Look at my tights – they’re all dirty,’ moaned Melissa.

  ‘All that crawling about on the floor – so babyish!’ said Emily, in the snootiest voice.

  ‘If you knew anything, you’d know that’s what modern ballet is all about,’ said Kitty, in her most wise and grown-up voice. ‘I shall have to teach you some more about it next week. Now, if you’ll just let me past, I’m going to go home and practise.’

  Mr George

  by Jamila Gavin

  HE HEARD MUSIC in the night. Distant music, from far, far away; but its energy made his body twitch. Lying in bed, Kit’s feet wriggled, his muscles flexed. The rhythms of the music seemed to enter his bloodstream and course round his body, lifting him from his bed. He sprang right into the middle of the floor.

  How strange. There was a trap door there in the middle of his bedroom floor. He had never noticed it before, and from somewhere beneath the trap door, somewhere beneath his wriggling feet, came the music. It was irresistible. Kit tugged a brass ring and lifted open the trap door. The music flooded out. Hastily, he climbed down the steps, pulling the door down over his head, lest the sound should waken everybody.

  At the bottom of the steps, he paused and breathed deeply. He stood in the wings of a vast stage. He felt as nervous as if he were about to walk out and perform before hundreds of people, all waiting somewhere in the darkness, beyond the row of footlights which dazzled him.

  The stage was set like a wood – but a wood made entirely of crystal. The trees were white and glistening – their trunks, shards of glass, their twigs were icicles and their leaves like droplets of dew.

  Somewhere below the stage in the pit, an orchestra played music: violins and cellos, oboes and flutes – sadly, merrily, energetically, hauntingly – it made him want to dance.

  A figure appeared and disappeared as she wound her way through the trees. Like a ballerina or a sylph, she was white and fluttery. Sometimes she was just one figure, but other times, her reflection was multiplied over and over in the trembling crystals. He must follow. He stepped on to the stage. His tread made the crystal wood tinkle and flash with all the colours of the rainbow. In time with the clash of a cymbal, he leapt forward and almost reached the ballerina, but then there was a thundering of drums and everything went dark. The crystal wood vanished, and he found himself lying on the floor back in his bedroom.

  He crawled over to his bedside table and switched on the lamp. His heart thudded. He pulled back the carpet and felt a wave of disappointment. No, he hadn’t been awake. It wasn’t real. There were only the bare boards. No trap door. No crystal wood and fleeting sylph. He had been dreaming those dreams again, those wide awake dreams which seemed so real.

  Yet – there was music. It was very faint, but he could hear it and he wasn’t asleep now. It came not from below, but from somewhere above his head.

  Kit stared up at the ceiling wonderingly. The little chandelier, which his mother had found in a junk shop, and insisted on hanging in his room, was swaying and tinkling.

  Mr George lived in the flat above, and he often played music. But who could be moving around and making his chandelier tinkle? Not Mr George; he had become almost housebound with arthritis. His carer had long since put him to bed and gone, yet Kit was sure he could make out a faint pattering of something moving across the ceiling above him, something which made the chandelier sway. The music lilted and waltzed, and the little droplets of crystals gently shimmered. Like one hypnotized, he fell back into his bed with drooping eyelids, and slept.

  He would have forgotten all about it, except he found his bedside light on the next morning, and remembered. He glanced up. The chandelier was absolutely still now. He checked his watch. In five minutes, Mr George’s carer would come to wash and dress
the old man, and help him into his wheelchair in the window, from where he could view the world coming and going.

  Some days later, a letter was wrongly delivered to their flat. It was addressed to Mr Ivan George. ‘Kit! Just pop this letter upstairs to Mr George!’ cried his mother.

  When Kit reached the top of the red-carpeted stairs and stood before Mr George’s door he heard the music. It was the same music he had heard the other night in his dream. He stood spellbound, feeling his muscles twitch and his toes wriggle. At last he knocked, feeling suddenly shy. He had never been in Mr George’s flat before.

  ‘Enter!’ an oddly high voice, with a strange accent called out to him. He turned the knob. The door was unlocked, and he walked in. It was as if he had walked on stage before curtain up, for before him was a heavy, deep crimson, velvet curtain which created a dark lobby before entering the apartment.

  Nervously, he peeped round the curtain. ‘Er . . . Mr George?’

  This time, there was no answer, but the music flowed around him. Kit stepped into the apartment. ‘Mr George?’ he called again. What a strange room it was. There was hardly any furniture to speak of; a straight-backed chair, a small table and an upright piano. There were no carpets on the floor, just bare boards looking worn and scratched from wear. It must be easier for a wheelchair, thought Kit. Faded red velvet curtains hung in the bay window, held back by shabby gold tassels and, at the far end of the room, a huge mirror, full of dark, trembling reflections, stretched from ceiling to floor.

  But what really captured his eye were the photographs all round the walls. They were old, black and white photographs, all of dancers: some were beautiful ballerinas in stiff sticky-out tutus like daisies or candy tuft, others looked like swans in their flowing long dresses. Many of the photographs were of hunters and warriors – muscular and strong – spinning high into the air, or leaping like tigers across a stage.

  One photograph in particular captured Kit’s eye. It was of a dancer dressed in the costume of a prince. He wore a swirling cloak and hunting boots, and held a bow in one hand while, on his other arm, he supported a ballerina. As delicate as a snowdrop, in a long, white, flowing ballet dress, the ballerina drooped in his arms, balanced on the pointe of one foot, while her other leg extended upwards like a swan.