Mar. 4, 2013
CREATIVE CATALYSTS: Dancing to the rhythm of mind, body and soul
By VICKI GRANT | CREATIVE CATALYSTS
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| The Jazz Dance Centre director Kathryn Edgett, shown in her studio at the University of King’s College last week. (TED PRITCHARD / Staff)
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Growing up, Kathryn Edgett had a somewhat distorted view of the world.
“I thought every eight-year-old could do the tango,” she says.
All things considered, it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. Her single mother managed to provide for five daughters by teaching ballroom and Latin dance throughout New Brunswick. The whole brood helped out.
“We lived tango. I’d been going to ballroom competitions since I was six, selling tickets, doing hair, sewing costumes, playing music, doing whatever needed to be done.”
By age 13, Edgett was hopping the train from Moncton every week to take Highland dance lessons at the Wallin School of Dancing in Dartmouth.
By 14, she’d moved to Halifax to live with two older sisters who were members of Singalong Jubilee’s Buchta Dancers.
By 18, she was a young mother herself.
“I was a stay-at-home wife during the day and I taught every night. At the Conservatory, the Mount, in the University Club, at Saint Mary’s — seven days a week. It was a lot, but that’s how much energy you have at that age.”
While her kids were still little, Edgett also toured with Don Messer’s Jubilee, danced in a revival of the Second World War hit show Meet the Navy and performed for three years on the television series Ceilidh.
Several decades later, Edgett’s energy has flagged somewhat — but not by much. She established the Jazz Dance Centre in Halifax in 1989 and still teaches six classes a week to children, teenagers and adults.
She’s in her 27th year of teaching a compulsory course on dancing for actors in Dalhousie University’s theatre department.
As well, she’s recently added “liturgical dance” to her usual repertoire of tap, jazz and Highland forms. Working with Anglican Bishop Susan Moxley, Edgett choreographed and performed a four-minute dance piece as a prayer when both her husband and mother were ill. She also created a celebratory work as a gift for St. Timothy’s Anglican Church in Hacketts Cove.
How has she maintained her passion for dance for all these years?
“I love my students,” she says in a short break before beginning afternoon classes at the University of King’s College dance studio.
“For me, the mind-body-soul thing is huge. I’ve taught so many people over the years who think of themselves as ‘too this’ or ‘too that.’ Our body is our gift. Dance shouldn’t be about an end or a result. It’s an experience. Dance for yourself. There’s no such thing as perfection.”
The camaraderie is also important to Edgett.
“Last night, before the advanced classes, people were sharing medical challenges, their travel plans, next steps in their education — then the music starts and they play together on the dance floor.”
Edgett knows she “can’t compete with the big schools in the city” but her approach to dance has brought her a loyal following. Several students she first taught when they were in Grade 1 are now in their 40s.
Clearly, they like to dance to her tune.
To find out more about Kathryn Edgett, go to her page under faculty and staff at theatre.dal.ca.
Vicki Grant is a screenwriter and the author of 12 young adult novels.