My Approach to Character Dance

The publication of this narrative marks the completion of the circle of Maria Fay's work in the U.K. since her arrival here as a refugee in 1956. Having had a successful career as a dancer in Hungary she was, first and foremost, a classical teacher and coach of great importance working with many companies and schools world-wide. Her experiences of helping so many dancers over the decades then led to the development of the Maria Fay floor barre, designed for purposes of daily strengthening and when necessary, as a constituent of the rehabilitation process after injury. She has written extensively, and made films about these two strands of her work. But, until now Maria had not addressed on paper the third, and very significant element of her contribution to our profession, which was the development of her particular way of teaching character dance to classical dancers. Today, just as decades ago when her mind first turned to this issue, artistically and technically this is an important strand of classical teaching. It took some time to persuade Maria that this work could be written about in a way that artists and their teachers would find valuable, as well as being important to have a record over and above that carried in the heads of those of us who advocate her methods. Disciples can interpret, cherish the principles and indeed bring new thinking, but at the end of the day we are not actually Maria herself.