Memoirs of lifetime teaching what she loves
‘Whatever your passion is, never let it go, hold on tight,’ says Katikati dance teacher
"It was always fizzing inside me . . . it still is. I just can’t stop teaching." Gaye Hemsley
Ballet teacher Gaye Hemsley is still keeping people on their toes . . . She’s still teaching in her 80s. ‘‘It was always fizzing inside me . . . it still is. I just can’t stop teaching.”
The well known Katikati dance teacher is teaching an adults’ ballet class.
She has put out a book of her memoirs, Journey of a Dance Teacher, and gave a talk at a Katikati U3A meeting recently.
Her love of dance began when her ballroom-teaching mother took young Gaye to see the ballet Rambert in Auckland which “started a fire” in her.
But Gaye was already 9 years old when most young ballerinas were well into their dance careers.
Because of her late start, Gaye didn’t think she could reach the dancing heights but becoming a teacher appealed more.
She took on some of her mother’s clients and was teaching others by the age of 15.
But one day the dancing stopped. Gaye talks about her “heartache” as a teen when she lost an entire year of ballet.
“We went away for a summer holiday and mum said, ‘you’re not going back to ballet’. I just assumed it was because she couldn’t afford it. I didn’t question it. It just broke my heart.”
Her mother had been told it was very dangerous for girls to go up on pointes, but this was incorrect and applied to young girls, Gaye says.
Her devastation was such her mother allowed her back to teaching and she’s been teaching ever since.
Into retirement and living in Katikati, Gaye continued teaching young children and is now teaching the adults’ dance class. The youngest pupil is 50, the oldest is in her 80s.
“It’s for balance, deportment and keeping them on their feet. It’s all done standing up, we do a lot of warm-ups, exercise every part of their body, followed by some ballet movements and they’re learning all the French names. “So it’s training the brain as well.” Gaye is often told of the benefits her students get from the class.
One of her other passions is writing children’s picture books which evolved from teaching very young children to dance.
Journey of a Dance Teacher includes stories of her career, about motherhood to four children while not letting go of her dance passion.
She’s travelled to dance workshops all over the world and tutored at some of them.
Gaye is director of a non-profit group Christina Productions Inc where she gets involved in community activities such as birthday parties, kindergarten and rest home visits, the Sunday Scribblers Adult Writers, children’s books, costumes for hire and her adult dance class.
Her motto for life is “follow your passion. Whatever your passion is, never let it go, hold on tight,” she says.