The incredible origins and proud 50 years of Barbara Cuckson's Rozelle dance school

"I believe very strongly that everyone can dance.

My school's been in Nelson Street Rozelle for 50 years, we started in 1971. When I started I thought, 'if I can make this work for 10 years I'll give myself a clap.' And here I am 50 years later.

I decided I wanted to have my own dance school because the type of dance that I do is specific, in that it's not ballet, it's based on Gertrud Bodenwieser's dance style which came from Central Europe.

I don't teach her performance work, I teach her method. She was an artist, I'm a sharer.

I've never aimed for having a dance group that performs. I've only ever aimed to promote dance within the community for everyone. We cater for all kinds of people, because we are part of a community of people who aren't all perfectly built and beautiful.

I got this energy from my father, Eric Engel Cuckson, he's an amazing man who gave me a sense of community and giving back and sharing. He was an icon, a special person.

He was a political refugee and came as far from Europe as he could come. He never spoke German and never spoke about what he had gone through, which was a lot. He had lost his mother and sister in the Nazi gas chambers.

He was born in Vienna, and escaped to England from where he was hidden in Prague. That's where he met my mother, she was teaching English to foreigners in London at the time. They settled in South Wales and came to Sydney with our family in 1949.

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I was born in 1945, in Wales. When my mother was in hospital having me was when the end of the war was declared. And I always felt that it was a new period of hope, and we were all imbued with this feeling the world was going to be a good place.

My father opened up W.E. Cuckson & Son, a zipper and machinery factory in St Marys in western Sydney, with government help, because they were encouraging industry at the time.

Within 10 years, his little factory that started up with about 20 people ended up with about 600 employees. We had no family, apart from our little family, and we sort of embraced all the people that worked in the factory.

[My father] supplied social activities as well as employment and also housing. He had a community centre in his factory which included an orchestra, a choir, a drama group, tennis courts and a swimming pool. It's very astounding to people's ears these days.

I wanted to dance and my father said 'okay, we'll have a dance school'. And he found out that Gertrud Bodenwieser had come to Sydney from Vienna as a refugee as well. They'd both escaped from the Holocaust.

[Gertrud] is considered the mother of modern dance in Australia. She did what they call 'ausdruckstanz', a German expression dance. It's free movement, it's movement that's natural.

In 1954 she opened a school in the factory in St Mary's, and she mentored me. She was a woman on a mission and did not make any allowances for my age, she never gave up but persisted, patiently explaining in her calm voice until I achieved what was wanted.

When she died in 1959 I was 14, and basically took over the school with my mother's help. I started teaching the little ones. But my father's ill health forced him to sell the factory and the dance studio had to find a new home.

I'd been living in Rozelle so I thought I needed to open a dance school closer to where I was living and I looked around and found a site.

I bought the building in 1969 when I was 24, it was an old shoe factory and before that a salvation army hall. It was a derelict building and Rozelle was a very working class, poor area. It was full of people who'd come from Greece and Malta as well as poor Australians.

I thought this is an ideal place for me to start because that was the sort of people I'd come from. Poor people with high aspirations and a lot of energy and hope, and that was what Rozelle was like.

We opened at Easter in 1971 and we had 15 students, I thought that was pretty good. And then the adults came to me, the mothers, and said 'what about a class for us' so I started the adult's classes.

I thought, it's not just a dance school, it's going to be for everybody who wants to start up some sort of cultural or community recreational classes. All sorts of activities have happened and still are going on. It's all very harmonious, it's meant to be for people to come and the world outside stops and they have a place to be themselves.

Mainly what we specialise in is recreational dance and the community feeling of being in the group and learning to help other people. The older students are always there to help the little ones.

Coming from a refugee family there's that element of feeling like we have to give back. When you haven't got your own family, you look to be part of the family of your community.

The most precious thing with my school is sharing with people. Sharing the space, sharing my knowledge of dance and its joy. It's better than any money you can get, you have something to look forward to every day.

People always say that when they walk in the door they feel like the world outside doesn't exist and they leave behind all their problems. And that's exactly what it's like.

How privileged I've been to be able to do that, and be part of the Rozelle community, for so long."

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