"No matter what happens in your life, nobody can take away your dance.” Spanish Proverb

I grew up in a small town in New Mexico with the niggling belief that in an earlier life I had been a dancer.  In a family where a love of the arts did not exist, to my mother’s dismay, I developed a love of ballet.  She thought it was okay for little girls to flit about on stage, but it was not a profession she wanted for her only daughter.

She used to say that “ballet is about as useful as a tit on a boar hog”.  Her disapproval only increased my determination to dance.  To escape my provincial home town, the people I lived with in my head were Russian dancers: Olga Preobranjenskaya, Mathilde Kschessinsakya, Anna Pavlova, Galina Ulanova.  I saw the movie Bambi at five and gave myself a secret stage name.  My new first name was that of Bambi’s future mate and the second from a “russified” version of my Christian name.  I eagerly looked forward to the day when I could discard my boring patronymic and rechristen myself Faline Anova.
   
As I grew older, the enchantment extended to Russian music, Russian art, Russian literature.  I even used to dream in Russian, understanding every word though I couldn’t speak a word of it during the daytime.  My youthful obsession spirited me away from a boring border town that had rodeos, Little League baseball games and 4-H Clubs, but no ballet company, theater or art gallery.
   
In this cultural desert there was only one dance teacher who was also a cotton farmer.  Although dedicated, she did not have the ability to produce professional dancers.  I was fifteen when I auditioned for a regional company fifty miles away. My long-suffering parents had to drive me to El Paso so I could pursue my balletic ambitions until, at seventeen, a stage fall shattered my knee.
   
Despite surgery and reinjury, I continued to dance for another four years before I finally accepted the dream I had wanted so desperately would never happen.  Frustrated and depressed, I moved to California, New York and then London where I drifted into an evening class on creative writing.  Though I wouldn’t admit it to myself at the time, I secretly hoped that I might find another way to express myself. 

I enrolled at Morley College, then at the City Lit where I loved the classes taught by Rosalind Belben, David Plante and Carol Burns.  I studied with them for several years, eagerly learning my craft.  My first success came in 1979 when I submitted a chapter from my then-unpublished novel, No Angel Hotel, to a BBC Radio Short Story competition.  I had the thrill of hearing “The Hat” performed on air by a member of the RSC and had my first pay cheque as a writer.  This was followed by the publication of short stories, poems, a novel and the staging of my play, Children of the Dust, by the Soho Theatre.

Everything I’ve produced, from my first short story to my novels, plays and poems, has been an attempt to understand the human psyche, including my own.  It is also essential to be able to tell a good story if you want to have a readership beyond your family and friends.  To be a good story teller requires constructive feedback.  No one can be objective about their own work so a writing group has always been my forum for trial and error.  I have no doubt this is the reason I have been published.

The first private group I worked in was one I formed with other members in my classes at the City Lit.  All of the core members of The Group, as we called ourselves, have now had their poems, novels and short stories published or their plays produced.  Many years later we’re still meeting, though more infrequently now because people have moved to Clacton and Canada, but nevertheless we’re still writing, still friends.  Since that time, I’ve worked with a series of other groups, some of whom were serious and others that fell apart because people fell out with each other or simply developed other interests.  All my novels have been nurtured in writing circles, but it was only in the “shoot-for-the-moon” groups that I received my toughest criticism.  Needless to say, it was in these I did, and do, my best work.  It’s where I learned to write. 

In addition to The Group, I am also a member of the Zenazzurrians, a band of London writers who read out our stories and novels to each other in weekly instalments.  Published books that have been workshopped in the last three years are Roger Levy’s Icarus (Gollancz), Elise Valmorbida’s Book of Happy Endings (Cyan Books) and The TV President (CBe Editions).  My latest novel, The Double Happiness Company, is currently looking for a publisher and “The Speed of Dark”, a short story workshopped with the Zens was a runner-up in the 2008 Bridport Prize.

The long experience of working in groups served me well when I began to teach creative writing.  In addition to running my own courses, I am increasingly asked to teach for other organisations, including Ernst & Young, Chambers & Partners Legal Publishers, Alternatives and the Daytimers at Liberal Judaism.  I find teaching hugely satisfying as a way to help others to discover their creative potential.  I love what Ray Bradbury said: ‘We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled.  The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.’

I recently co edited a book in collaboration with Nomi Rowe, In Celebration of Cecil Collins, an inspiring collection of memories about a visionary artist and educator.  Cecil said that ‘The purpose of art is to worship and praise life through wonder and magic.’  A latecomer to one of his classes found the room in darkness and thought it had been cancelled.  He went to the ground floor and the custodian informed him that, yes, the class was going on as scheduled.  When he went up a second time and pushed open the door, he found that Cecil had instructed his students to paint in the dark, the only illumination the full moon.

I tell my students that that is what the act of creation is, painting in the dark. You’re going into unlit places to pull out and examine what is inside you.  To create, you have to give up your fear of the dark and seek the moonlight.  It is scary, but it is also wondrous.  Magical.  We all long to leave our mark as humans.  We can and we must.  As James Baldwin said, ‘For while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard.  There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.’

As a teacher, I am there to help my students honour their own wisdom, experience and imagination.  I try to be Ray Bradbury’s “tipper”.  The exercises I set are geared to trigger memories and feelings so they can be transformed into words.  If you’re drawn to write, you must do it because no one can ever do it for you.  It’s important for that reason alone, so it doesn’t matter if you’ve written for years or that you dream of writing.  It doesn’t matter that your grammar or spelling isn’t perfect.  Art, at its best, is an offering of the heart.  Your heart. Whatever you choose to write about, each of you will create something different. As the dancer and choreographer, Martha Graham said, ‘There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.’

I am at the age now that, even if I’d had the ballet career I struggled for, my pointe shoes would have been hung up long ago.  But I’m lucky. I have found another way to communicate.  Now it is my words, and my students' words, that dance and nobody can take that away from me.      

© Anne Aylor 2009

Anne Aylor

Anne Aylor is a professional writer who has had short stories and poems published by the Arts Council of Great Britain, The Literary Review, London Magazine and Stand Magazine.  In addition to being a runner-up in a Radio 3 competition, a number of her stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio. In 2008 she was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize.

Her novel, No Angel Hotel, was published by HarperCollins, Grafton Books and St Martin’s Press (US title: Angel Hotel).  She has recently completed her second novel, The Double Happiness Company, and is 80,000 words into her third.

Her stage play, Children of the Dust, won a playwrighting competition and was co-produced by the Soho Theatre and Theatre Warehouse, Croydon.

She worked in post-war Bosnia where she practised Chinese medicine and taught ballet. She teaches at Morley College in London.

www.anneaylor.co.uk