I took up ballet aged 50 – just as I started losing my mum to dementia
Studying my 2016-17 diary now, the round of activity I embarked upon as I turned 50 looks decidedly manic. For a long time, I knew I would die before I got old. Having tested positive for HIV when I was 22, I was told I had a probable life expectancy of no more than 10 years. So I had no idea of reaching 40, let alone 50. But as 2016 approached – and after 20 years of effective HIV medication – I realised that I was, incredibly, going to reach my half-century. So I made a decision. I wanted to be the best version – physically at least – of my 50-year-old self.
Earlier that same year, my mum, Angela, had reached 80, and the dementia that had started to impinge on her life some years before was now leading to increasing mental and physical problems. I realised that while the exercise I’d undertaken (intermittently) in my 20s was about making myself look good in the here and now, exercise in my 50s was much more about preparing myself for reaching the same age as my mother, for the struggle of old age.
I joined my local Slimming World and there were visits every few days to a Pilates coach, who would guide me through the stretches and contortions of the reformer machine. Despite this, I decided – why, I now can’t imagine – that I needed one more activity in my fitness routine. Reading that Mick Jagger attributed his ability to undertake stadium tours in his 70s to a regular ballet class, I concluded in 2018 that what I needed was ballet.
Despite being a culture lover, ballet has never figured highly in my list of priorities. In fact, it hovers just above jazz on my “only if there’s no other choice” list of possible evenings out. But the combination of strength, flexibility and an aerobic workout was irresistible and I signed up for beginner’s ballet at the City Lit in Covent Garden.
With my new life of exercise, I’d got used to being the only man in the room. The women of Slimming World had welcomed me, the female environment of the Pilates studio had been friendly. But the women here gave me a far frostier reaction. Edging into my first class in newly bought jockstrap, tights and ballet shoes, there were no welcoming smiles. In fact, there was a reluctance to even make eye contact with me. The teacher was encouraging, but when I was paired up with an older German woman, she muttered loudly with every move I made: “Oh you are very bad. You are terrible. You are doing it all wrong.”
She was right, of course. I was terrible. But I observed gleefully that she was even worse – a truly awful dancer. But what else could any of us be? Beginning ballet in your 50s or even older (as was much of the class), there’s no possibility of being good in any conventional sense. I found it was best to let comparisons and competition drop away and just commit to the physical discipline of the barre and the ridiculous beauty of an ageing body moving to the romantic strains of Tchaikovsky. I began to look forward to my weekly classes.
One day around this time, I called Mum and was chatting away about the weather and her favourite TV programmes when she stopped and asked: “Who am I speaking to please?”. When I explained that I was called Mark and that I was her son, there was a sigh of delight and she said: “Have I got a boy? Well, that’s good.” It’s a disconcerting moment, the first time your own parent doesn’t remember you.
For much of her time with dementia, Mum was happy, enjoying a child’s wonder at relearning the contours of her world. Upset and distress were experienced more by those around her. After our phone call, I wandered around dazed. If I didn’t exist any more for my own mother, who was I? I realised that I’d always assumed that wherever I was, she was thinking of me, watching me, that she was the audience for my performance. Now I was looking out at an empty auditorium.
It was only then that I started to make some connections. I realised that my choice of the ballet class had deep roots. As a four-year-old, I’d seen a film of The Tales of Beatrix Potter, performed by members of the Royal Ballet. More than the dance, it was the costumes that really fascinated me. That a human being could be transformed into a frog or a fox was thrilling. Back at home, I resolved to recreate Jemima Puddle-Duck’s dance (why that character, I can’t recall) and pushed Mum into making me costumes and props from cardboard and a sheet. Somewhere in the attic of my family home is the cine film that Dad shot of me dancing in my makeshift costume around a papier-mâché egg in the woods near our house.
As my ballet classes progressed, so did Mum’s dementia, with longer and longer stays in hospital and talk of a possible care home. Losing someone with dementia is a series of goodbyes as – over several years – parts of their memory, personality, their physical ability fall away. Mum finally died in the spring of 2019 in a bed set up for her in the living room, looking out over the garden. I never told her about my ballet classes. It didn’t seem something worth talking about when she was struggling with the final loss of all mental and physical faculties.
For the past year, lockdown has largely cut me off from my exercise programme, although the Pilates coach Zooms me twice a week to fend off the worst of the flab and sag. But I’ve had plenty of space to reflect. And to write. When the theatres closed in March and we were all unsure when they would be open again, I decided that an audio drama would be the best thing to make. Audio’s unique ability to take an audience inside a character’s head, to slide easily from memory to the present would be a great way to tell Mum’s story, to explore what was going on in her head as the dementia progressed and to describe my own brief encounters with ballet as a child and an adult. By May 2020, I’d finished my play, Angela. And last month, I spent a week on Zoom as the cast – including Pam Ferris as my mum and Toby Jones as my dad – recorded the play, making this very personal story in to a public piece of art.
By the time we’re clear of Covid restrictions, I’ll be 55. I’m not sure if I’ll be rushing back to ballet class. But I’ve kept – in a carrier bag, tucked at the back of a drawer in the wardrobe – the jockstrap, tights and my ballet shoes. Just in case I want to dance again.
Mark Ravenhill’s Angela is on Sound Stage from March 26-28. Tickets: lyceum.org.uk and pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com
