'The key to running a successful ballet school is boundaries and good discipline. Not just for the students – I’m talking about the mothers. You have to show them who’s boss or they will try and push you around.”
Judith Townsend runs the West London Dance Academy, which has 300 pupils, aged from three to 14. Herself a classically trained dancer, Townsend learned the art of crystal-clear communication from her mother. “When I was a girl, doing competitions – which are quite brutal, because you stand in a line before the judges either in abject misery or basking in glory – my mother would say that if I ever dared to walk off crying or in a strop, that would be my last ever competition, so I always kept my head held high.”
As the Natalie Portman ballet film Black Swan opens this week, controversially lifting the veil on the dark underbelly of an art form premised on seemingly effortless perfection, ballet mothers come off rather badly. Portman’s unhealthy relationship with her infantilising, over-controlling parent, is a crucial component of her mental fragility.
It makes for a melodramatic storyline, but is it a fair reflection of the mothers whose self-sacrifice and tenacity is instrumental in propelling their daughters to the peak of their profession?
Dame Margot Fonteyn’s mother, Hilda, signed her up for ballet classes aged four. She studied ballet in Shanghai when her industrialist father moved to China and was brought back to London at the age of 14 by her mother, specifically to pursue a ballet career which saw her feted internationally and remembered as one of the greatest classical dancers of all time. One woman’s pushiness is another’s prescience.
In an incendiary book, Off Balance: The Real World of Ballet, former American dancer Suzanne Gordon talks about the “invisible partner” on stage with every ballerina; the ballet mother who has give up all semblance of a normal life to give total support. She writes about the bitter rivalries between ballet mothers, which increases their isolation and loneliness as they become obsessed with their children’s success. It’s an extreme, but a recognisable one and in the US, the Sarah Palin-style soccer mom prides herself on being a fearless force to be reckoned with. In ballet circles, the mood may be less overtly pugnacious but there is often a stubborn refusal to face the facts; namely that lolloping little Imogen is never going to be cast as Giselle at the Bolshoi.
“The overwhelming majority of parents are supportive and just want their child to enjoy dance,” says Townsend. “But I have had repeated requests from some mothers that their children should sit exams, even though it’s obvious to me – and I make the decisions – that they’re not ready. I also remember at a competition, one woman told me off for not saying “well done” enough to her daughter compared with the other students – she’d actually been keeping count all day, which was a bit peculiar, to say the least.”
The sharp-elbowed mother, ambitious, rude and overbearing has become something of a modern stereotype. Fathers who encourage sons to excel at football, cricket or rugby come in for a lot less criticism than mothers who do the same for their offspring, whether on the tennis court – the spotlight has been frequently known to fall, not altogether flatteringly, on Andy Murray’s mother, Judy – or in the lead role of Swan Lake.
Taking any recreational activity from one-a-week hobby to the level of dedicated practice, training and beyond, is demanding and necessitates an heroic application of energy, organisation and focus – unless you are very lucky.
Cath Paulley, a mother of four from London, spotted that her youngest, Grace, lived up to her name from the age of three. “As a toddler, Grace moved in the most musical, graceful way, to any sound; even if it was just the beep-beep noise of the bin lorry reversing, she’d be expressing the rhythm with her body,” says Paulley, a copywriter, who lives in south west London. “There’s something astonishing about seeing any sort of special talent in your child, particularly when it’s something as lovely as dance.”
Grace started weekly ballet lessons and proved such a natural that she gained a place at the Royal Ballet School on the strength of just one hour of dance a week. Now aged 13, she boards at the school and is in her third year. “My friends would probably say I bang on about ballet a bit, but it’s hard not to as it’s such an exciting, beautiful world,” says Paulley. “I've met 'ballet mothers’ who drive round the country bringing their children to various competitions, but they’re not nasty, just very focused and determined to give their children every opportunity to improve and progress. It’s not just about vicarious living, it’s wanting your child to succeed.”
But Edwina Norris, principal of Rutleigh/Norris Ballet School which runs classes in and around Birmingham wouldn’t necessarily agree. “Most parents are delightful, but some do want to live their own dreams through their child and can’t see beyond that,” she says. “Yes parents need to nurture their child’s talent, but for any child to make a career in dance that unstoppable drive has to come from the soul, not from their mother.”