Then there's the bell. As the teacher who has requested an examination of her students by a professional organisation, one must provide a bell. A ballet exam hall is a quiet, lonely and peaceful place, occupied by an examiner and a pianist (or, in our case, nervous me and a computer full of music), with a seething mass of students and teacher on the other end of a door.
The teacher will have spent several sleepless weeks checking and rechecking her schedule, teaching and re-teaching proper etiquette, having nightmares about not having taught enough etiquette, having nightmares about having taught too much etiquette for the students to be natural, getting up in the middle of the night to re-stitch costumes because there's no effing use trying to sleep, alarming her partner by sitting straight up in the middle of the night shrieking, "I FORGOT TO CHECK IF SHE'S VEGETARIAN! GODDAMN!" and generally evading confinement in a tight white jacket only by being too fast to catch.
The students will be bouncing around like so many rabbits in headlight-land.
You see now why the bell is necessary. Only with the use of the bell can the (completely calm) examiner let the teacher know that it's OK to let the next bunch of rabbits into the hall. It is also useful to wake up the mesmerised music person, or maybe that's only me.
So, we practised last week. With a tinkly kitchen bell that was actually quite comforting.
This week, my friend, the Honourable Teacher, received a present, in the midst of the lunatic asylum that currently represents her life.
It was a bell. An examiners' bell. Not just any bell. Not even a new bell. It was this bell.
Many years ago an aspiring young dancer took the stage and danced, in London. I particularly like her because she's shorter than me; and she still made it. For those who don't know, if you're shorter or taller than the average - which is 5 ft 4 - you're in for a rough ride. Aspiring Young Dancer took on and beat that challenge.
Her life story isn't mine to tell. But at a point, her partner lifted her - and dropped her. On her head. Her dancing career was foreshortened; I'm thankful for reasons that aren't mine to divulge, that she chose to beat that, and became a teacher and choreographer extraordinaire.
She's chosen to involve herself here with Honourable, and slightly Manic, Teacher. I'm not going to try to describe the depth and breadth of her contribution in this, the first year of Honourable Teachers' teaching; except for the word immeasurable.
And then she found her own, old examiners' bell; and had the name of her academy shaved off it, and engraved the name of Honourable Teachers' brand new dance school on it, and gave it to her for luck, for her first exams.
Yeah, OK, I cried.
