Boy bitten by ballet bug is back in North Queensland

By the time you read this I will be back in North Queensland, where I grew up, came of age and first donned tights.

At my high school, the real men played rugby and cricket. Basically, I was Billy Elliot.

I knew that eventually I’d have to go shopping for a pair of proper ballet tights. What I hadn’t figured on was the attractive assistant at the dancewear store twirling an elaborate jockstrap around in front of a bunch of suburban ballet mums and their daughters, bellowing: “You’ll be needing one of these. What size are you? Medium … or small?”

“These” were supports, elastic contraptions devised to hoist the family jewels out of harm’s way as the male dancer attempts potentially nut-cracking manoeuvres. The support accounts for the bulge unique to male dancers … although it was not unknown for cheats to resort to stuffing their support with a sock or two. Such were the initiation rites awaiting a boy bitten by the ballet bug in the back of beyond.

By the time you are reading this, I will be back in north Queensland, where I grew up, came of age and donned my first pair of tights, for the first time since getting on a bus, aged 16, for the three-day odyssey to Melbourne to take up my place at the Australian Ballet School. The flight to Cairns will take only 2½ hours, and the closest I’ll come to tights is a pair of Lycra bike shorts, as I will be pedalling my way around the Atherton Tablelands, the Daintree and other points north.

My incipient northern exposure dislodged a mudslide of memories. I would be returning a lifetime later to the towns that had been the settings for endless swimming carnivals in bug-infested pools, daggy camping trips and, later, an Arts Council tour as the first trainee dancer with the North Queensland Ballet, now Dancenorth.

I got into ballet as a lark with my mate Donald when the company needed some extra blokes for its performance of Cinderella. As sophisticated men of Grade 11, we figured we’d impress a couple of ballerinas we fancied in Grade 10 with our terpsichorean prowess. This meant ballet classes, to develop a modicum of grace and co-ordination. We began in shorts but soon graduated to tights. Pulling on your first pair is a weird moment in the life of a relatively normal suburban boy. It felt dangerous. Subversive. At my high school, the real men played rugby and cricket. Basically, I was Billy Elliot.

This was Australia’s far north, where men were men and cows were cautious. Townsville in those days was a hard army town with a thriving yobbo culture and an undercurrent of violence. A place where the local weekly free-sheet once splashed with the headline: “Poofs in the Park”. After high school, I took up my place as trainee and we embarked on a gruelling program of school performances in every hick town from Mackay to Tully and west to Mount Isa.

I was teamed up with Trevor, fresh from Sydney Dance Company, short, floppy-fringed, acid-tongued and enormously doe-eyed, possibly the campest thing to flounce out of Oxford Street, and Susie, a small but perfectly formed ballerina who was sex on well-defined legs.

We would roll into town, set up the stage, slap on some pancake and ham it up in front of the bemused students, a process repeated several times a day. Afterwards, we would make a beeline for the pub, where locals congregated in sweaty wife-beaters, Stubbies shorts and thongs. They would ogle Susie over pots of XXXX, and she enjoyed making them pant. But they would also shoot dirty looks at Trevor and me, arty outsiders and no doubt poofs, and therefore to be reviled if not bashed.

My worst taunting, however, came as I finished Grade 12. I lived in one of Townsville’s far-flung suburbs, which meant halfway through the bus ride home we had to get off our bus and share one with the rough Catholic girls of St Pats. They had got wind of my ballet lessons, and the taunting was merciless.

Revenge was sweet and sticky. On the final day of high school, I came armed with a dozen eggs and, before alighting, I skipped down the aisle, cracking one apiece over the lank, greasy locks of my teen tormentors before disembarking for the very last time with a grand jete of exultation.

So, St Pats girls, here is fair notice that I’ll be back in the north, albeit presenting a moving target, legs a Lycra-clad blur as I pedal my bike around the old haunts.

I’m giving you a sporting chance. The boy who did ballet is back. Break an egg.