For nearly 50 years Tarrant-trained dancers have appeared in every imaginable dance chance in Wellington. There have been end-of-year performances, Christmas parades, Chinese New Year celebrations, Kids Magic, Artsplash, Cuba Dupa, carnivals, and all manner of community celebrations. Among the thousands of dancers that she has taught, many of them have become internationally successful.
Her mother was an artist and used to teach, so when Deirdre was young, her mother would use dancing lessons as Deirdre’s baby-sitting classes. She loved it.
At college, for three years she found herself parts as an extra with the Royal NZ Ballet and at 15 she toured New Zealand with the troupe.
In her later college years, Deirdre’s father said that if she wanted to go to university, she would need to be Dux of her school – so that’s exactly what she did. She went to Dunedin to become a doctor – but in Dunedin, there were no ballet classes. So, she promptly came back to Wellington, where she completed a BA, and was awarded a dance scholarship which she took to London.
As a 19-year-old in London she did “anything and everything” to survive, teaching, working, and studying. Later Deirdre travelled on three-month teaching contracts in Canada and America.
She spent eight years mostly in London. There were lots of auditions, and many appearances as a dancer on stage and on TV in France, Scandinavia, London, Canada, and the United States.
Because she was quite tall and the men in the dance classes were too short for her - she went to Canada in the northern summer for 11 years where the men were much taller than NZ or the UK, performing and teaching at the Banff Dance Academy.
Deirdre came home to be a teacher at the New Zealand School of Ballet (now the NZ School of Dance) and started a family.
In Cuba Street, the wonderful old Barber’s building at number first became a dance school nearly 100 years ago. Deirdre took over in 1976, and with her special brand of enthusiasm has been teaching ever since. The polished wooden floors have felt the feet of many thousands of aspiring dancers of all ages.
She has also developed an interest in kinetic learning – she tried a few exercises on us, managing to find out that many of us are auditory or visual learners – not many of us are both!
It was a lovely slice of Deirde’s life and love of dance.