Ashgrove Dance Studio ballet sisters lift the barre
The talented women behind Queensland’s oldest continuously running dance studio share their remarkable story as it fights to continue through a tumultuous 2020, writes Leisa Scott.
Lifestyle
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The piece of paper Wendy Lowe is holding has that telltale yellowy tinge of age but the memories it evokes, the heritage it represents, are pure gold.
The typewritten note sets out in precise detail how to run the Ashgrove Dance Studio – right down to a warning that the gramophone will skip if the students are practising springs.
It was 1973 and with the handover of the instructions by Miss Nell Bassett to Lowe and her sister Judith McCaffrey, the duo leapt into the job of keeping a legacy alive.
“It’s what we’ve always done, we love it,” says Lowe, now 67, of their stewardship of what is believed to be Queensland’s oldest dance studio. Adds McCaffrey, 74: “We’ve never wanted not to do it.”
Their dedication to the now 121-year-old studio is why young Stephanie Louwen-Skovdam is in this parish hall in the inner-western suburb explaining just how to achieve what she calls “zigzag legs”.
“You bend the knee and have the other one straight,” the seven-year-old advises, adding an elegant swish of her hand to show the perfect angle of her bended knee.
Stephanie should be preparing for the grand finale – the end-of-year concert. Not just any concert, but a bells-and-whistles performance at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, which has hosted the extravaganza since 1998.
Stephanie is an old hand: she’s been a poodle, a doll and a Tinker Bell fairy at three previous concerts.
But for the first time in the 47 years the sisters have run the studio, there will be no concert due to COVID-19. “I miss the concerts,” says Stephanie.
So do the sisters. “We’ve never not done a show,” says Lowe, who had plans for a Roaring ’20s theme, probably with a beach scene in neck-to-knee bathers and definitely a rendition of the Charleston.
“We do quite impressive shows, we’re the only dancing studio that goes to QPAC, so it’s quite a shame.”
Still, troupers such as Lowe and McCaffrey know that life doesn’t always go to plan and as the fancy-footed Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers would say, when your chin is on the ground, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again.
NEXT GENERATION
IT’S a CD player, not a 78RPM record on a gramophone, that’s sending “Let it Go” into the rafters of the hall on Ashgrove Ave as six girls under 10 take to the barre to go through their paces.
“Big smiles,” says Miss Wendy, surveying her charges. “Really stretch out and point your foot, and have your big smile.”
Lined up at the back of the hall are the mothers, watching closely as their little girls, all in costumes from last year’s concert, add that extra length to their pose.
Cheryl MacPherson, whose daughter Quinn, 9, is resplendent in a pink and green tutu, says one of the attractions of the studio is that parents are allowed to watch their children practise.
“Most schools, you can’t stay and watch these days, but Miss Wendy and Miss Judy are more relaxed about parents being involved, which I like,” she says. “They’re firm but friendly and they’ve got a lot of years of experience behind them.”
That experience goes back to the 1950s, when McCaffrey began dancing aged eight under the tutelage of the Bassett sisters – Joy, Faye, and Nell – who had run the studio since 1938.
McCaffrey’s baby sister was obviously going to follow in her footsteps. “I used to sit in the pram doing all the arm positions, apparently,” says Lowe. “One of the ladies who comes to our tap class used to bounce me on her knee.”
A special memory for McCaffrey is heading to Sydney in the 1960s to watch Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev perform Swan Lake.
“I was about 16 or 18, we drove down with a chaperone and we went backstage and got their autographs,” she says. “It was such a thrill.”
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Ballet captivated McCaffrey.
“I was the ballet girl and Wendy was the all-rounder,” she says.
Lowe loves all styles of dance, she says, but is particularly taken by the “Hollywood stuff, the kick-lines with the headgear with feathers and all that”.
Together they toured extensively with Ballet Theatre of Queensland founded by Miss Phyllis Danaher (who Lowe worked for as ballet mistress), the Queensland Modern and Contemporary Dance Company and the Arts Council.
McCaffrey was often the lead dancer and even scored some small parts with the Australian Ballet and Opera Australia.
When the duo took over the studio from the Bassetts for the princely sum of $100 at the young ages of 19 and 26, they came with a secret weapon – their mother Theda. No sequin or tuille was safe near Theda, who would make most of the costumes until just a couple of years before she died in 2018, aged 95. Their father Bert would also get involved.
“He’d make scenery and carry things everywhere for us,” says Lowe. “It’s been a real family thing.”
They had paying jobs but the afternoons and Saturdays were for teaching dance. It’s never been a chore, say the duo who have completed all Royal Academy of Dancing exams and teach a range of styles to about 120 students across the age ranges, from “three to 83”. They added Zoom lessons to their repertoire during COVID-19.
“It’s so nice when you see the little shy ones come in, holding their mother’s hand, and gradually you get to take them away to dance and they love it,” says McCaffrey. Adds Lowe: “Sometimes people lose a bit of confidence as they get older but when the older ones are dancing, especially on stage with the group, it’s such a big, exciting thing.”
Plus heaps of fun, says Lucille Fuller, 71, a tap devotee who says it is disappointing she won’t be strutting her stuff under lights at QPAC this year. “The group of ladies I’m with, we have a whacko time while we’re waiting to go on,” she says. “There’s mischief aplenty in that dressing room.”
She credits the longevity of Ashgrove Dance Studio – started by Miss Nellie Lawrence in 1899 – to the Lowe family’s drive and passion.
“Everyone adored their mum, and the three of them just poured so much of themselves into that studio and the students have responded. You can feel it. There’s a lot of love there,” she says.
The stage lights might not shine on the Ashgrove Dance Studio’s Class of 2020 but as long as Miss Wendy and Miss Judy can still point their toes, the dance goes on.
For the first time in the 47 years that sisters Wendy Lowe and Judith McCaffrey have run the 121-year-old Ashgrove Dance Studio, the show can’t go on because of COVID-19.
“We’ve never not done a show,” says Miss Lowe, 67, who says being accepted to move the studio’s annual show to QPAC in 1998 was quite a coup. “We do quite impressive shows, we’re the only dancing studio that goes to QPAC, so it’s quite a shame.”
Like many other arts organisations affected by the pandemic, the studio adapted to restrictions, offering Zoom classes to its 120 students – which came with a few funny moments.
“We had one girl who did the Zoom classes in her walk-in wardrobe and another one was dancing in the passageway and her leg was up against the wall,” says Miss Lowe. “And we had some chooks walk in, and dogs and cats.”