My name is Kloey Bam. I started attending ballet classes when I was 4 years old and have continued dancing throughout my school years. This year I will matriculate at the age of 17 at the Academy of Maths and Science in Constantia Cape Town. I love my dancing and have worked hard to do the very best I can in this beautiful and most physically and mentally demanding art form.

Whilst this is the very personal story of one of my dancers it is a story that is possibly mirrored in many other ballet schools around the world and not only in South Africa. The question that lurks in all our minds is – where to now? Where do classically trained dancers get work that will provide a reasonable income that they can actually survive on and not live off the largess of their family and friends? Dancers need a company to provide the infrastructure in order for them to survive. Yes it can be a case of, have body will travel, as the dancers body is their instrument. But that instrument needs to be nurtured and constantly trained to stay at peak performance level. It also has to be fed and clothed and when necessary medicated and treated.

Kloey at her Matric Ball in 2010 © ImagineMag!

One is constantly reading and hearing of ballet companies facing closure, of funding that has been cut or not paid. Of businesses/organisations that do not want to subsidize ballet companies and so the stories of woe continue. Not only ballet companies but the many NGOs that are constantly claiming that business, the government, the private sector in fact anyone who has money must support them. My question is why?

Why should anyone support us to do what we have chosen and want to do unless we can provide and prove there is a social and/or a financial benefit, preferably both, to them? So instead of complaining of lack of funding, let us focus on what we do have to offer and what it is business and everyone else will benefit from by supporting ballet training and then possibly they might be more interested in assisting us in developing ballet careers and professional dance companies.

Kloey as Aurora in Dance Crew’s 2009 production of ‘An Indigneous Sleeping Beauty' © ImagineMag!

When Kloey first started ballet she soon discovered it was not all about beautiful costumes, lollipops and roses. Recently we were reminiscing about the years we have spent working together, about the tears we both shed in the course of her training, strangely enough as we discovered, for the same reasons. We both wanted her to get it just right! I always knew she could achieve what I wanted her to do. I could see she had the most perfectly suitable body for ballet, a very strong and intelligent mind and possibly the most important quality for a dancer – a natural musicality. It also helped enormously that she had highly disciplined and hard working parents who supported and encouraged her in this long and at times painful process.

The problems she experienced, which most dancers do, is the difference between knowing in your brain what your body has to and wants to do but not being able to physically achieve it. The very quality that you want in an artist, sensitivity to their emotions also works against them in the daily grind of class. The constant correction and critical analysis of their work no matter how tactfully done is a constant source of irritation when they know what has to be done, but their body simply has not got the strength, or the speed or whatever is needed at that particular moment, to do. Once they come to the realization that it will be a lifelong process of learning and improving, training proceeds more smoothly. And that is precisely what happened with Kloey and many like her in my school.

When she was 15 we invited her to join Dance Crew company classes and rehearsals with the admonishment that she stay in the back and not interrupt the flow of the class. This she achieved so admirably that it was not too long before she could keep up with the more senior dancers. Her skill of instant sequential learning and total recall of everything she learns was an enormous plus. One area that was always a cause for concern was her limited emotional and expressive qualities. Her technique developed rapidly and accurately but was not being matched by her self expression and her ability to show that very joy of the dance that she freely acknowledged but seemed unable to express when in performance. There were