Face to Face with Merce Cunningham

James Davidson

Very occasionally, something like once every other year, a stranger, over-impressed by the way I’m standing, will say something like ‘you’re a dancer aren’t you’ and I will be enormously pleased. Any real chance of being a dancer was probably squashed for ever when I was ten and an audition with a proper ballet school in Manchester was cancelled in mysterious circumstances. Either I had flu or my grandfather, of all people, wouldn’t have been happy, or I wasn’t actually that keen. I can’t remember anything about the episode apart from the fact of its existence. Occasionally, I try to make my parents feel guilty about it, the chance of an alternative life story thrown away, a door allowed to slam, just possibly, on a brilliant dancing career, but they’ll have none of it and say I would have found a way if I’d really wanted it, which is an effective answer, though not necessarily true.