Dancing in time ..

MOST of them are bitten by the bug when they are barely out of nappies; many don’t even remember the first time they began dancing. 

Each year hundreds of thousands of little girls and boys pull on their tights and ballet flats, dreaming of the day they too may sign autographs at the stage door. They don’t know that those who make it are likely to be out of a job by the time they reach 35 – 40 if they’re exceptional – but it wouldn’t stop them anyway, so fierce is the passion.

Retirement comes early in the physically brutal world of dance, but the life of a professional dancer is so all-consuming it can be difficult to dedicate any thought to the future. Many don’t want to think about it.

While sports stars tend to be protected through mentoring and retraining programs, it is a different story for dancers. Company budgets mostly don’t stretch to assisting dancers into other careers; the Australian Ballet is an exception in having a formal scheme that includes subsidies for further study and access to careers counselling and financial advice. Until recently there was SCOPE, a five-year initiative run by national advocacy body AusDance and funded by the Australia Council that helped retired dancers find work within the arts sphere, but the program was wound up a few months ago when funding wasn’t renewed.

Many former dancers segue into teaching and running ballet schools; those who manage to move beyond that sphere agree the traits specific to being successful in the profession – dedication, drive, a refusal to give up or give in, and the ability to perform with a smile through exhaustion and pain – are traits that translate well into other fields, even giving them an edge over others.

Review spoke to seven former professional dancers who have successfully branched out.

CATHY PHELAN
CATHY Phelan describes her home in the wine-making country of Victoria’s Yarra Valley as “a little bit of heaven”, with its vistas across the valley, bountiful grape harvests and herd of friendly cattle next door. But it has taken years of perseverance and recovery from a family tragedy to be rewarded with all she has today.

Phelan knew from a young age she wanted to dance professionally. After graduating from the Australian Ballet School she performed with the main company for a year before combining a desire to travel with her love of dance by joining Northern Ballet Theatre, a touring company based in the English city of Manchester. She returned to Australia after four years and was accepted into the West Australian Ballet. “We had a broad range of repertoire, the lifestyle was gorgeous and we did quite a lot of travelling to Asia and over east. I loved it,” she says.

It never occurred to her to think about the future until, after 10 years, a niggling back injury forced her to confront the daunting question: what next? She completed a TAFE diploma in tourism and travel but with little company support. “[Studying] was almost frowned upon because I wasn’t completely engrossed in what I was doing,” she says.

In 1997 Phelan and her parents decided to fulfil their dream of buying a property and growing grapes. She later resigned from WAB and moved back to Melbourne, but life was hard. It took two years to find the right property and Phelan, unsure of what to do, began working for her mother in her gift store and at the post office. Then the family was shattered by the death of her brother.

“The whole transition was quite difficult for me, and I had a family crisis,” Phelan says. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was in limbo for some time. It’s so difficult transitioning from dance to normal life.”

Eventually the family found their dream property in the Yarra Valley, which they named Sutherland Estate, after her mother’s maiden name. Phelan began studying for a bachelor of applied science (wine science) at Charles Sturt University, which is where she met her husband, Angus, a former barrister.

Today the couple works side by side in the wine shed, Angus as winemaker and Phelan his cellar hand. They all work second jobs to bring in additional income, Angus as assistant winemaker at nearby Coldstream Hills and Phelan takes a weekly dance class. Phelan misses aspects of dancing: the freedom of expression, the focus and dedication. But she says it’s worth the effort. “It’s a long-term thing and it’s something beautiful that we have. It would have been very easy to say it wasn’t working, or find something easier. But it’s quality of life, and that’s what’s important.”

DANIEL HAVAS
“IF anybody in the office sees these photos of me in tights they’ll be surprised,” Daniel Havas says with a laugh. “Nobody knows I used to dance.” It’s not that Havas hides the fact he danced for 20 years, more that his job as director of investment attraction for Brisbane Marketing is a world away from classical ballet. Nevertheless he attributes much of his current success to the skills he learned through dance.

Havas began learning classical ballet aged six and moved to England when he was 16 to study at the Royal Ballet School in London. He remained abroad another four years, guesting with the National Ballet of Iceland and dancing as a soloist with South Africa’s Natal Performing Arts Company before returning home to Brisbane and the Queensland Ballet, where he quickly rose to the rank of principal artist.

It had never occurred to Havas to plan for a life beyond dance until he noticed some colleagues’ bodies were giving up and they were left wondering what to do next. Adamant he would never find himself in that position, he quit. “I jumped out when I was almost at my peak. It was a very quick decision. I was 26.”

He began a degree in business and hotel management, adapting easily to the rigours of study thanks to the discipline and ambition he’d developed as a dancer. Learning to deal with the public on a more basic level — doing front-of-house jobs or waiting at restaurants — took a little longer.

“That was a real challenge, going from signing autographs at stage door to serving people at banquets. It gave me an incentive to push forward.”

Havas capitalised on the contacts he made while handling all the accommodation for the 17,000 world Rotary convention delegates to move into the corporate sector and international business before being invited to join Brisbane Marketing in 2007. Today, as director of foreign investment, he oversees a team of 11 whose job it is to attract international business to Brisbane.

Although he doesn’t miss dancing, he acknowledges his background has helped him realise his position today.

“You’re very creative as a ballet dancer and these days in business the ones that succeed are innovative and creative,” he says. “I give a lot of speeches and presentations now and being [comfortable] in front of people is there because as a ballet dancer you probably like being the centre of attention.”

Today he juggles his job and young family (his wife Natalie is a former QB dancer) with his recent appointment to the board of QB. One of his first moves was to recommend the company look into a scheme for dancer retraining. “So many dancers don’t know what they want to do afterwards, dance is so competitive, which makes you so focused that it’s difficult to think outside that,” he says. “I didn’t have [any formal retraining] and it’s part of attracting talent. It’s important these days.”

LISA BOLTE
LISA Bolte had just been promoted to principal artist of the Australian Ballet when she received the devastating news from the company doctor that she should consider another career. She had coped with injuries all her dancing life but had recently been plagued with stress fractures.

Rather than take the advice she became even more determined to keep dancing. Many years later she retired when she became pregnant with her daughter Olivia and was later invited to return as a guest artist, ultimately leaving in 2005, 11 years after she had been advised to stop.

Bolte was only 38 but had been so immersed in life as a ballerina and mother she wasn’t sure what she wanted to do next. She began teaching ballet but felt unfulfilled. “I wanted to experience other parts of life. When you’ve been in dance since you’re seven there’s a whole world you haven’t been exposed to.” She started an arts management course before swapping to a master of arts in creative enterprise at Deakin University, which she revelled in. Half the course fees were paid for through the Australian Ballet’s dancer retraining scheme, meaning she could complete it part-time while juggling her teaching commitments and bringing up Olivia.

Bolte was relieved to see there could be a fulfilling life after dance, and readily accepted a position in February this year as the Australian Ballet’s patrons manager of annual giving for Victoria and Tasmania.

The job is a perfect fit for this popular former dancer and requires her not only to look after the company’s patrons and encourage an increased level of giving but also to learn how to work within budgets and organise and host functions.

“I’ve found it incredibly stimulating. Doing the course gave me a lot of the knowledge and confidence to achieve things outside dance,” she says. “[Philanthropy] is an area that’s blossoming all over. It all ties in because I have the dance connection and people feel more comfortable with me, but it’s a passion that’s transferable.” This year she took a group of patrons on tour to Tasmania for the centenary of the Princess Theatre and next year will take another 50 people to New York for the company’s 50th anniversary celebrations.

If Bolte were to offer advice to dancers today it would be to accept any opportunity to expand their skills and further their experience beyond life as a dancer, be it public speaking or further education.

“I always believed you had to throw yourself into dance, give 110 per cent. Offstage I’d listen to the music in my car and watch other dancers,” she says.

“[Former AB artistic director] Maina Gielgud was very much of the opinion that ballet should be your breakfast, lunch and dinner. It was a different time. These days they have maternity leave policies, everything is online compared with before when you had to do one thing or the other — study or dance. It’s a different time now.”

LUCINDA SHARP
IT was only after her dear friend and fellow dancer Kelvin Coe died that Lucinda Sharp decided she needed to re-evaluate her priorities and look at what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.

Sharp had already had two successful careers: her long and fulfilling decade dancing as a leading soloist with the Australian Ballet as well as performing in New York, London, Athens and Beijing. A hip injury led her to retire from dancing in 1984 and she moved easily into other roles within ballet companies.

But when Coe died in 1992 “it made me look at what I was doing with my life and ask myself, ‘Am I doing enough?’ I realised I didn’t want to rehearse and teach for the next 20 years.” She fulfilled a long-held dream of going to university, where she gained a bachelor of science degree with first-class honours, followed by a masters in clinical psychology. “I was 15 when I left school, so going back to uni aged 37 was quite difficult at first. Luckily when you’ve been a dancer you have a strong work ethic.”

When Australian Ballet School artistic director Marilyn Rowe made the inspired decision to appoint a psychologist for the young dancers Sharp didn’t need to be asked twice. She spent the next decade working with the dancers and staff providing support in everything from coping with homesickness to life beyond dance. “We start talking about transition when the students are 14 or 15, because students do leave or give up [ballet]. Dancers can be quite insecure about moving on, they think dance is all they can do,” Sharp says. Today the ABS is the only ballet school in the world to have a full-time psychologist on its 12-strong health team.

This year Sharp moved into a part-time role at the ABS, allowing her to open her own Melbourne psychology practice, where she sees clients from the general population with issues such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, grief and life adjustment.

“I’ve found psychology quite creative, in terms of coming from an artistic field, looking for patterns and designing appropriate interventions,” says Sharp, adding that the tolerance, patience and teamwork she learnt as a dancer are invaluable tools for her work today.

KIP GAMBLIN
KIP Gamblin laughs when he recalls Graeme Murphy’s response to being told Gamblin was leaving Sydney Dance Company for a role on the television soap Home and Away. “He said, ‘What do you want to be remembered for, kid: signing autographs at Westfield or dancing at the Sydney Opera House?’ It was kind of true. But dance was never going to set me up for life.”

It was a lesson Gamblin learned early when his mother, a National Institute of Dramatic Art-trained actor and dancer, had to give up the stage for a better-paying job as a teacher. Gamblin, a keen surfer and skater, followed his three older sisters into dance, graduating from the Australian Ballet School to the AB.

He went on to dance with West Australian Ballet and perform with visiting singers including Kylie Minogue and Barbra Streisand before spending five years with SDC, where he met his future wife and fellow dancer, Linda Ridgway.

Gamblin had dabbled in acting and when he was offered a main role on Home and Away the package was too good to refuse. “At the time I was dancing lead roles at Sydney Dance, doing 200 shows a year, touring nine months of the year and making $450 a week. I had a two-year-old son. Home and Away offered me triple what I was making,” the 36-year-old says.

Shrugging off the inevitable gibes about selling out, Gamblin concentrated on learning the ropes in this foreign world where, unlike dance, rehearsals were nonexistent and feedback scarce. “My first big scene on set was terrifying. The director yelled, ‘Cut, move on’, and I stood on the spot wondering if it was OK or not. There’s not a lot of nurturing with acting.”

Nevertheless he soon earned a Logie for most popular new male talent; and after three years with the show he and his family moved to Britain where Gamblin spent two years on the popular BBC drama Casualty.

Since returning to Australia he has appeared in Moulin Rouge!, Mao’s Last Dancer and the medical drama All Saints, among other things, while earning some pocket money teaching dance. Gamblin recently finished shooting the 2012 season of the ABC drama Dance Academy and is in a new family drama, Tricky Business, for the Nine network. It is in production now and will air in 2012. He and Ridgway have also set up a new studio for professional dancers.

“I think inside me I still want to dance. It never leaves you,” Gamblin says. “It’s very hard to break into the acting world when you’re a dancer, people try to pigeonhole you. But because of my dance background I feel like I’m more prepared. With acting you really have to push yourself, and if you’ve survived dance you can pretty much survive anything.”

GEORGIA SHEPHERD
GEORGIA Shepherd’s dance career finished the day she told Sydney Dance Company she was pregnant. It had been a golden time for Shepherd, who performed in the premiere of shows such as Synergy with Synergy and Soft Bruising in Australia and overseas.

Shepherd had taken a course in dancer retraining and mentoring while still performing, hoping to work in the company’s administrative department once she retired. But it wasn’t to be. “I left Sydney Dance literally the day I gave notice, which was a bit sad,” she says. “I wish I’d had more time to mature as an artist. I had a relatively short career.” Then Stephen Page offered her behind-the-scenes work with Bangarra Dance Theatre and in 1996 took her to Atlanta to assist on the Olympics handover ceremony. There was other dance-related work, but the turning point for Shepherd and her husband John, a chef-turned-lawyer, came after a sabbatical to Greece when they decided to buy a restaurant on their return.

After two years and the birth of another daughter, they found the perfect spot in the Blue Mountains. They redecorated it and renamed it Solitary, opening in 2000. John was head chef and Shepherd front of house.

“It was terrifying,” she says. “We didn’t have enough money, we’d invested all our life savings and we had this assumption people would come and we would do great food. But we didn’t factor in it was the Blue Mountains and people wouldn’t just [turn up].” It wasn’t until restaurant critic Matthew Evans wrote a glowing review of Solitary, noting it “served meals you love to eat with views you love to devour delivered with the welcome kind of attitude that doesn’t give you indigestion”, that the tide began to turn.

In 2003 Solitary earned its first chef’s hat, an award it continued to receive until 2007 when it gained two. After five years John decided to return to his legal career, leaving Shepherd to run the restaurant, look after the bookwork, the staff of 18 and two young children. “You had to keep going. But that’s the overriding characteristics of a professional dancer: incredible perseverance to work through pain and exhaustion and look like you’re enjoying it,” she says.

The couple recently sold Solitary, but Shepherd says the restaurant’s success came largely because of her dancing experiences. “I’d learnt that inner discipline to see it through. It was a brilliant experience, like putting on a show every night. You had to make sure the props were in place and everything was ready to go.”

DARREN SPOWART
DARREN Spowart became interested in traditional Chinese medicine when he performed in China in 1985 while on tour with Sydney Dance Company. Several dancers sought help for physical niggles from a local traditional doctor and Spowart was astonished at the healing effect of this natural treatment. He danced with several companies and had returned to SDC when an ongoing hip injury forced his sudden retirement. “I felt like there was room for rehabilitation but sports medicine hadn’t yet developed as far,” Spowart says. “I felt unemployable even though I was 30 years old. There are a lot of dancers who get put out to pasture, but these days we know that with the proper care they can dance longer.”

Spowart is grateful to then SDC general manager Derek Watt who helped him find sponsorship to begin retraining in traditional Chinese medicine and Pilates so he could work with dancers and hopefully prevent them from suffering a similar fate.

“Prevention is most important when it comes to looking after dancers, being ahead of the problem rather than waiting until it happens,” he says.

He now looks after visiting international dancers (among them Sylvie Guillem, Akram Khan, Bill T. Jones and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui), the Australian Ballet and his own clientele whom he treats at his private practice in Sydney, focusing on face rejuvenation, massage, acupuncture and Pilates. Where massage used to take up most of his time he says the emerging field of cosmetic acupuncture – a natural alternative to Botox or facelifts – has taken over.

“I didn’t like what people were doing to their faces. It’s about true rejuvenation and health. Face rejuvenation is a really undiscovered alternative at this stage.”

Spowart has been out of the dance industry longer than he was in it and says there are aspects he doesn’t miss. “I don’t miss the day-to-day slog, I don’t miss the experience of pulling on a dance support and tights and ballet flats and being bound up like that all day. But I miss it as a form of exercise and expression. There are moments on stage that are magical.”