ALL THAT JAZZ Memoir by Lucia Nardo

Ballarat, 1978

My mother enrolled me in calisthenics because the church hall in which classes were held was conveniently on the next corner.  At ten, I had no idea what calisthenics entailed, but was soon caught up in its items: march, freearm, rod twirling, folk dance, plastic (a combination of ‘graceful movement’ and pose), and song and dance. It lasted into my teens, when I gave it up for more interesting pursuits – boys and badminton.

For reasons that now escape me, I resumed in my early twenties, joining St Stephens Calisthenics Club in Williamstown. A small club, our members were working class and without the resources of large monied-up clubs from the eastern suburbs. Our hub was a dedicated teacher and a group of mums. Over endless cups of tea, the mums spent Wednesday nights in the drafty hall collecting class payments and our ‘bank money’, a form of saving account from which we bought fabrics, trims, beads, and the ubiquitous sequins, to sew costumes for the annual concert.

Calisthenics was, and still is, about performance. There were concerts and competitions, with the biggest comp of all, Royal South Street in Ballarat. We’d never competed there so when our teacher entered us, we were excited about a weekend away, the bus trip, an overnight stay in a historic 1870s pub, and just hanging out with the girls. Weighed against this were travel costs, limited costume funds, and the opposition – clubs whose members dripped with winners’ medals.

For the song and dance item, we chose All That Jazz, from the Broadway musical, Chicago. The song’s about decadent prohibition-era living. In addition to its raunchy lyrics, it’s known for its suggestive dance moves although it’s doubtful Bob Fosse had in mind a conservative calisthenics club in Melbourne’s industrial west when he choreographed the number in 1975.

Our elderly pianist was dismayed by our choice, so in deference to her and in a further act of daring, we used a backing track. It was a one-take affair achieved by placing a tape recorder on the hall piano while a musician friend of mine played the song. Rebels, we didn’t even make a backup.

After months of additional practice nights and weekends, we were ready. As per the lyrics, we were ‘going to rouge our knees, and roll our stockings down’. Except it wasn’t rouge, it was Marching Girl Leg Tan. Pungent smelling, rather than giving us honey-toned skin, it stained our legs tangerine. Along with sequins, it was a calisthenics mainstay.

Ballarat was colour, bedlam, and nerves. I have scant memory of our other comp items, but for song and dance, I can still picture us in our simple costumes: strip skirts, half the girls in shamrock green, the others, fuchsia pink. Without money for kilometres of sequins, we opt for fewer, but larger. We add fishnet tights and silver-sprayed dance shoes. Our hairstyles are uniform, faces framed by nineteen twenties- style headbands and our eyes slathered in heavy stage makeup.

Girls with professional costumes that shimmer with sequins, look us up and down, whispering to one another behind their hands.

We take our positions facing the stage rear wall. The curtain groans and rises. The audience murmur fades. A beat … The piano intro blares through the speakers. Recorded music? There’s a gasp from the crowd. We turn to face blinding lights. We high-kick, we shimmy, we bunny-hug in some derivative of Fosse’s choreography; as sexy as being St Stephen’s calisthenics girls allows. We belt out the lyrics – a bit flat – but we don’t care; we’re painting the town and the whoopee spot is this stage, this minute. We end in final position, faces aching from smiling, chests heaving.

We come off stage ecstatic just to have got through it so as the results are announced, we listen without expectation. Third place; second; first – All that Jazz. Someone screams. It might be me. There’s hooting and bouncing and a sense of disbelief. We smile all the way home. Legends.

There’s now a website that lists historic results of the South Street comps, but I can’t yet find any reference to our win. It must be there somewhere because I have proof – a photograph of us in post-win pose. On the back are our names, along with ‘first place’ and in a small box where I store my modest collection of medals, there’s one for All that Jazz.

A production of Chicago is coming to Melbourne in December. I might buy a front row ticket just to see how well the cast can shimmy shake and high-kick. I’ll probably decide they can’t do it like we did, but I reckon they’ll definitely have more sequins.

lnardo

Dr Lucia Nardo (PhD) is a Melbourne-based writer of fiction and non-fiction. The author of the crime comedy novel Messy Business, Lucia has been an integral part of Stereo Stories - its website and especially its concerts - since the origin days of 2014.