The Monthly discusses life as a dancer with Michael McEvoy – Part 1 – A determination to dance

How did you get interested in dance?

I grew up in a golden  era where there was quite a bit of dance on television in the UK. One of my earliest memories was watching Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “I’d Do Anything” which was a TV show where they were trying to cast Nancy and three young actors to perform as Oliver Twist in the musical “Oliver”, or “Over the Rainbow” where Webber was trying to find a new Dorothy. There was “Dancing on Ice” and “Strictly Come Dancing” as well.

Those were big shows in my house and that probably comes down to my grandparents love of music, they were choir people, and they loved musicals. We would have watched “The Sound of Music” at my granny’s house every Sunday. We had lots of musicals on DVD. My mum’s a flautist and so that would have been part of it as well.

You were surrounded by music and dance?

I can remember watching celebrities going on “Strictly” and “Dancing on Ice” and saying to my mum “I would love to do that.” Before I started dance I was actually a figure skater. My sister and I did gymnastics and figure skating for a long time

I found musical theatre in high school and I did a summer scheme in Belvoir Players and off the back of that I joined a Youth Drama Group in Lisburn called Fusion Theatre. I started there in P7 (and now I direct there), you were supposed to be first year at high school but they let me in early. And that is another world of am dram stuff that leads you, eventually, into lots of different areas.

It does sound like you were developing your love for music and dance at a very young age?

I was always on the hunt for stuff. We were always busy, whether it was scouts, or football, or other sports, athletics clubs or summer schemes.

I was always looking at post it boards where you would see flyers. Those were the good old days where you would get information from flyers, so you might see a one off hip-hop class in the Down Arts Centre. Jennifer Rooney, who is a very important choreographer, taught me hip hop dancing in Downpatrick when I was about 8 years old. And that class came from me seeing a flyer.

It looks like you had a supportive home environment; what about school?

I tended to forge my own way at school. I set up a dance group in primary school, Academy Primary in Saintfield, called The Green Machine and we wrote songs as well. In primary school we did musicals, we actually did musical theatre and I just thought that happened everywhere.

We put on big shows. I was a dancer in Mary Poppins when I was six years old. I really loved that and we used to get really involved, building sets, things like that.

I don’t think there was anyone in my primary school amongst the teachers who knew where to point someone if they were actually interested in dance or musical theatre.

I went to Saintfield High School, and the whole way through that I was really interested in the arts, I was doing musical theatre, I would go to dance classes here and there. But I didn’t know anything about the professional dance world, I didn’t even know it was there. No-one ever mentioned that at school.

How do you develop your interests then if there is no-one to help you?

At one point, I sat down with the principal and said I wanted to do a GCSE in Performing Arts and I remember saying that if I couldn’t do it at Saintfield High could I go somewhere else to do it.

She thought we could do it but I would need to convince other students to be part of it and some of the classes would have to be after school. I convinced everyone to be part of it. I argued with people if they wanted to do music, come and do this GCSE, same with designers, same with the artists. We did it and it was brilliant.

What happens after you finish your GCSEs?

The day I picked up my GCSE’s, my mum was driving me to school in Downpatrick and I said, “I don’t want to go.” There was a discussion where my mum was saying that I had to find something. I couldn’t just do nothing.

There was just something in me which made me say that I just wasn’t passionate enough about academic things. That meant I just wouldn’t survive in that environment. I couldn’t just be shoehorned in to something because my siblings were doing it.

I was also concerned because I was a young gay kid and I just didn’t think this school was the right place for me.

How do you resolve that situation?

We went to Belfast Met in the Titanic, and we asked what courses they had and was there a drama course. Now the people we were talking to thought there was but just not at that campus, so we got some information and an email address and eventually we were directed to the Tower Street Campus. We contacted them and they asked me in for an audition.

I did the audition for the Drama Course but I saw people in leotards walking around and I asked if there was a dance course. And it turned out there was and while I wasn’t able to do the audition that day, Sandy Cuthbert and Deborah Hamilton, who ran the dance course, pulled me aside and asked me if I had a solo. I said I did, but I don’t think I actually had a solo, and I think I just made one up. I danced for them and I got in.

I was really lucky, because I was part of the last group of students to graduate from that dance course. It was all just luck really that I got the call from Deborah Hamilton saying that I was accepted, and at the age of 16 I was studying dance, although I did have to do a summer intensive course in Ballet with Laura Walker.

I had done all this work in musical theatre and musicals but I had never studied or been taught any technique.  At that point I needed to learn some technique.