Gay Porter’s voice still commands a room, even as she approaches her 90th birthday. She sits now to teach classes at her Charlotte School of Ballet, dictating dancers’ movements from a perch in the corner.
“Arms in second,” she says, as four adult dancers follow suit one recent Friday afternoon. “Pivot to face the fifth corner. Arms go to arabesque, step to the right, facing sixth.”
Porter keeps one eye on her syllabus and one on the dancers. Katherine Nobles, who teaches children other days, is dancing in pointe shoes. She puts choreography to Porter’s words when needed, but there’s no doubt who’s in charge.
The room is quiet between Porter’s commentary, soft taps on the floor, and the occasional quip from one of the ladies. A dancer sneaked a peek at the clock on the back wall, which said 25 minutes past 1 p.m., the scheduled conclusion of class.
“You’re not in a hurry, are you?” Porter says, with traces of her English accent coming through.
She restarts the music, without really waiting for an answer.
“Once more,” Porter says.
The ladies continue on dutifully, knowing if she can, they can too.
Ms. Porter is an iconic figure in Charlotte arts. She has been teaching here for 56 years. Her Charlotte Youth Ballet company puts on its 44th Nutcracker Dec. 6-8, at CPCC's Halton Theatre.
Ms. Porter is the reason women come back to take dance. It’s why their daughters and daughters’ daughters come. It’s why Porter’s granddaughter, Remy Young, at age 2, dressed in a leotard from the lost-and-found, so "Gay Gay" would let her take her first class. Now, at 27, she is dancing at the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) in New York.
“I definitely owe it all to my grandmother,” Young said. “I got the gene. I got the bug.”
Gay Porter fell in love with ballet at age 9, growing up outside of London. After watching her best friend perform in a talent show in a tutu, she asked to take ballet.
Four years later, she was riding a train 26 miles to a prestigious ballet school. By 15, she was touring with a troupe through Great Britain. She met her husband, an American serviceman, touring in Germany.
She moved to the United States, making stops in Fort Hood, Texas and San Diego, Calif., before settling in North Carolina to start a family. First they lived in Hendersonville, her husband's hometown, and later Charlotte.
Here is where she flourished as a teacher, sharing not only her technical knowledge but first-hand experience. One of her favorite stories is about auditioning for The King and I at London’s Theatre Royal. Porter says she was one of nearly 1,000 dancers to audition and just missed the final cut.
“They said, ‘I’m sorry. You’re too tall for these three, and you’re too short for this group,’” Porter said. “Everybody else left. I just stood there in the theater, but I couldn’t leave.”
Her friend, who was chosen, told her dancers were asked to come back the next day to sign contracts. Porter came back too.
“I figured I had nothing to lose,” she said.
One of the dancers didn’t show. Porter got a part.
She’s still showing up 70 years later. Not until Porter broke multiple ribs after a recent fall has she missed significant time from the studio. She was back teaching soon after her hospital stay.
“She is such a force,” Young said. "Until a few years ago, she was still putting her leg on the bar…You could feel her passion through her teaching and that instilled in us a passion. You can teach technique, how to do something, but I think she instilled something much deeper in all of her students and still continues to do so.”
Porter likes to quiz students on French terminology. She doesn’t tolerate slouching on the bar or talking in class. She insists on classic leotards and tights. She corrects dancers individually, sometimes repeatedly, during classes.
“It's like polishing silver,” she says. “You've got to get it right.”
Porter’s students number in the hundreds, maybe thousands. Some have their own companies now. Many of their stories are documented in framed pictures, programs and articles in the hallway. In the studio, behind where Porter sits, is a framed photograph of a teenaged Young in arabesque, arms up, leg extended.
Like her grandmother, Young knew she wanted to pursue ballet at 9. “Gay Gay” took her to see Swan Lake at ABT, where ballerina Jillian Murphy performed Odette-Odile, the swan queen.
“That was the moment I decided I wanted to go for it,” Young said. “I didn’t even have pointe shoes yet.”
Two years ago, Young danced alongside Murphy in Swan Lake at the Metropolitan Opera House with Porter watching. She worked her way up from apprentice to the “corps de ballet” using the technical foundation her grandmother instilled and her advice on artistry too.
“She would always say, ‘dance with your eyes,’” Young said. “I am a thinker. It's easy for me to get in my head and get in my body and think so much about the details that I forget about the thing that makes it fun, which is the using your eyes, connecting with the audience, connecting with the people you're dancing with.”
Here is how Gay Porter's students say she is unique:
“There is the element of discipline and being detail-oriented, but her having the love and the drive is what everyone immediately recognizes and admires in her. That also makes people work.”
- Remy Young, 27
“She treats classes as if it’s a private lesson, even if you have everyone else in the room. That’s really helped make all of us much better dancers.”
- Emerson Engle, 17
“She’s very strict but that helps you when you’re dancing because it’s good for her to be very technical. She makes sure you get all the good things you need to pass the exam.”
- Scarlett Lluberas, 9
“It's like polishing silver. You've got to get it right.”
"You can teach technique but she instilled something much deeper in all of her students."