...the wounded deer leaps highest...
-Emily Dickinson-
The impromptu dance concerts I gave as a five year old were viewed by other members of my family with a mixture of bewilderment and growing dislike.
Eventually taboo'd (these were the 1950's) my obviously indomitable passion for Terpsichore demanded an outlet.
Studying harp and piano playing, choral singing, and hours spent with flying rings and horizontal bar in the attic helped me bide my time.
Having tried in vain to turn me onto all kinds of sports, my parents finally gave in and at fifteen I could take my first real ballet class.
No ‘Billy Elliot’ glory for me though. The daily rounds of humiliation and harassment from my male peers merely went up another notch, when they found out there was a ‘ballet sissy’ in their midst.
From I don't know where, I had the lion courage at age 16 to be open about my dream of becoming a dancer as well as about my homosexuality.
"Kans, pick up your bag and come with me". One fine day in 1967, our high school's hunchbacked vice principal came to collect me from the class in classical languages I was in. In the empty corridor he informed me in no covert terms that I was expelled from their illustrious institution, since "We have no use for faggots here". "But hunchbacks are okay", my wounded self slashed back.
Quite bewildered by my sudden telephone call, my mother came to pick me up. In our car, parked just outside the school, in one unbroken rant I spewed out all my lonely school years' misery. I can still see her pale to an ashen white, her hands clutching onto the wheel. After what felt like an eon and must have been a mere half hour, she asked "Is that all, Adriaan?" "Yes, ma, that's all".
She started the car. "You never go back to that school and of course you have our permission to go to the Dance Academy."