Challenge Accepted!: 253 Steps to Becoming an Anti-It Girl. Celeste Barber
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Название: Challenge Accepted!: 253 Steps to Becoming an Anti-It Girl
Автор: Celeste Barber
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
isbn: 9780008327262
isbn:
He’s so loved that when he was in hospital for the second time in his life (the first was the time he was born), the staff put him up in the presidential suite and there were nurses who weren’t rostered on that day visiting him to make sure everything was OK. (He had tightness in his chest, which freaked everyone out. Turns out it was gas. Classic Neville.) My mum, who has been in and out of hospital her whole life due to dodgy lungs, is lucky to get a bunch of flowers on her hospital visits these days, whereas Dad gets a full-blown fanfare if he gets so much as a blood test.
When I moved out of home at 17, my dad wrote me notes of encouragement on the backs of business cards. Every time I would go backs home, or he and Mum would visit me, he would have a fresh business card with a fresh note of love and encouragement. The business cards have been replaced with official and professional texts.
Celeste
Just looked at e mail from the copy editor
Just another one of your talents
You never stop surprising us all
Just more acknowledgment for the great person you are
Love Dad xxxx
Neville William Barber and former child dancer Celeste Barber.
My wedding day, Bali, 2013.
5,6,7,8
@cynthiav_beauty
(Top photograph by Melika Dez)
I DANCED WHEN I WAS A KID, and when I say ‘danced’ I mean danced (tilts head with an over-the-top click of the fingers). I danced at eisteddfods, at shopping centres, at school fairs, the Ekka (the Royal Queensland Show), conferences, football grand finals, in my nana’s shower, in my shower, and given the chance I’d dance in your shower too.
I was a self-proclaimed unique triple threat: I could Dance, Dance and DANCE. And I loved it.
My mum said that I could dance even before I could walk, but as I have said one billion times, my mum exaggerates a bit. This didn’t stop me from telling anyone who would listen, especially my fellow dance enthusiasts. You know those conversations you have with like-minded 12-year-olds about how you were born to do this and no one has the experience or dedication that you do?
‘I know all the dance moves to EVERY one of the Spice Girls’ songs, even “Viva Forever”,’ Julie would say over Macca’s while we sat in the splits.
Elissa would chip in, ‘Well, my big sister has taught me all the steps to all the senior dances, and she said that if any of the senior girls can’t do the end-of-year concert then I can totally step in because I’m so good at learning all the steps.’
I looked at these girls, knowing full well that what I was about to share with them would stop them dead in their flexible tracks. ‘Well, I could dance before I could even walk.’
Pause. Silence. Nothing.
‘Aaand my uncle’s a firefighter.’
They smiled. BAM! I knew it would floor them.
I danced at the Johnny Young Talent School (JYTS) on the Gold Coast. When I started there, it was the Colleen Fitzgerald Dance School. Then Miss Colleen married Mr Lance from JYTS and they merged the dance schools.
Look, I won’t lie, it was hard at first to accept the merger, but when the job opportunities came rolling in thick and fast to dance at Jupiters Casino on the Gold Coast because we were now known as part of THE JOHNNY YOUNG TALENT SCHOOL DANCERS (this must be sung, never just spoken, using jazz hands), we got over our loyalty pretty quickly.
I was 15 when I went on my first interstate trip to Darwin for two weeks and performed in shopping centres. There was a group of us that went, some as dancers, some as show comperes and some as suit operators. (You know those larger-than-life characters that walk around shopping centres during school holidays, scaring the piss out of all the kids? Well, there’s an actual person inside them, not just fear and misery.) In Darwin, I was lucky enough to be the suit operator of Sonic the Hedgehog, a rabbit and one of The Simpsons – I want to say Marge but I think it was Maggie. Given it was the September school holidays in Darwin, and the average heat at 8am was 37 degrees Celsius, I managed to halve my body weight in a week while still eating two-minute noodles 45 times a day. We all stayed in hotel rooms with balconies and would sun ourselves first thing in the morning as ‘morning sun gives you the most even tan’. This was my first and last interstate tour as I think my mum was worried after I came back from two weeks of work with protruding neck bones and a dependency on MSG.
Six-year-old Celeste Barber. This is still my go to pose when people want to take my photo.
I grew up near a beach that has bred some of the best professional surfers in the world, but it was lost on me. I didn’t do weekend nippers like everyone else because Saturday was dancing day – DANCING DAY – a day to dance: DANCE DAY! Mum would drop me off at class by 9am and I would carpool home like James Corden, singing the Spice Girls’ greatest hits, and since James hadn’t reinvented karaoke yet, our neighbours Esther, Bianca and Ashleigh were my lift home instead.
Jazz for the babies (two to four) was first and Bianca and I, along with other Show Group and Senior dancers, were student teachers. I didn’t love teaching but I just loved being at dancing, and especially on Saturday because it was when everyone from all the different studios across the Gold Coast would come together. We would compare the choreography we had learnt that week, and share clear nail polish to cover up the holes we made in our shimmers (they are stockings with a high shimmer finish, you guys: shimmers). We weren’t one of those dance schools that had to wear a uniform; we could wear whatever we wanted, as long as it was awesome and outshone the other dancers. One of the male dancers, who wasn’t ‘out’ yet, was partial to a fluorescent yellow unitard – an outfit that he would reserve for a 34-degree day, knowing he would sweat and make all the other curious boys jealous.
Miss Colleen always wore black, black on black with a side of black and something black. She always had a full face of make-up that my sister would say looked as though she had laid it out on her bed, tied her hands behind her back and just fell face-first into it. Miss Colleen did a few tours of Vietnam entertaining the troops in the ’60s – something that she loved and romanticised about often. She was a born performer and gave us and the studio everything she had, including her bad temper and sass.
After Babies Jazz came Babies Tap and a whole lot of noise. Intermediate classes came next and this is where it СКАЧАТЬ