Stay-at-home Stories: Katherine Porter

Justine (left), Jane (middle) and Katherine (right) in 1984

Lockdown may have physically separated us from friends and family, but my mum, Katherine Porter, rekindled old bonds with her two childhood friends, Jane and Justine. Ballet classes brought the threesome together as children, and history repeated itself during lockdown when they all joined (or gate-crashed) a Zoom ballet class run by Barbara, their childhood ballet teacher, now 82 years old.

Barbara Peters on The Greatest Dancer in 2019

The three live across the world, with Katherine in Essex, Justine in Scotland and Jane in California – scattered far and wide from Brighouse, the West Yorkshire town in which they grew up. Jane is my Godmother and those two have stayed in touch over the years, but I’ve never met Justine, and it had been 36 years since any of them had seen Barbara (apart from her appearance as a contestant on The Greatest Dancer last year). Overhearing the friends chat and giggle reminds me of the childhood stories my mum would tell me about the group’s teenage antics. “I’ve rediscovered a fun, playful side that isn’t there in a lot of my relationships,” Katherine explains, and I can see that too.

Jane and Justine ready for ballet aged 7

It was Justine who found Silver Swans on Facebook, Barbara’s class for her older students, and suggested the three of them join since it was moving onto Zoom. While Barbara was still very much the teacher, and Katherine, Jane and Justine were still very much the students, Katherine tells me that the dynamic between the three friends has shifted. “Over the last few months of lockdown we’ve created this really strong friendship that’s based on real respect for our different lives and lifestyles”. Katherine explains that their relationship is uplifting, fun and full of laughter, “life becomes so serious as you get older and a lot of your relationships are coloured by different events that have happened. With friends that I see more often there can be an intensity, a sadness or a seriousness.” She continues, her eyes welling up, “it’s positive to a ridiculous extent…little things like seeing people’s families in the background. I feel really connected to all of them.”

When I asked Katherine how the ballet skills are coming along, she laughed, “when you’re doing ballet in your own home and nobody’s watching you, you can feel like a ballerina and it really doesn’t matter if you do a pirouette and fall over”. Clearly, it’s not just about the ballet, although exercise surely helps many of us to momentarily forget the realities of the pandemic. Most importantly, these ballet classes brought connection at a time of great disconnect.