Eve Bentley & Averil Potter — TT’s grande dames of ballet

They founded their dance school decades ago and have taught generations of girls to appreciate the beauty and joy of ballet.

Principal Bentley, 76, was born in Argentina and her family migrated to Trinidad when she was seven years old.

She attended Holy Name Convent in Port-of-Spain and studied ballet with Helen Mary Kay.

Then she transferred to the Ursuline Convent in Barbados. At age 13, Bentley enrolled in the Cone-Ripman College which is now called the Arts and Education School in Hertfordshire, England.

The institution was a professional school of arts, drama and dance that also emphasised the importance of academia.

“We had half day of professional classes and half day of school work,” she tells Good Living magazine in an interview last week.

Bentley was just 16-years-old when she started going to auditions and performing in productions.

In 1961, she was asked to tutor dancers at the Helena Dunn Dance School.

“Helena Dunn’s mother is the famous ballerina Mary Rambert. Helena asked me to teach at her dance school. I never thought about being a dance teacher, I was trained to be a performer.

“So I decided to give it a try and I have been teaching ever since. It was just the little ones to start with and from there she asked for help with the upper grades.”

Potter, 73, is the school’s co-principal and teaches the major students. Potter who is British also studied at Cone-Ripman College.

She went on to become a dance instructor and taught classical ballet technique, national and Greek dancing classes.

Potter was a teacher at the Arts and Education School while Bentley was a student there, but the two never met. Potter met Patrick, a Trinidadian who was a marine pilot, and they married and moved to Trinidad in 1964. Then, she started teaching ballet at the Caribbean School of Dance.

Potter said: “Dance was the first thing that I wanted to do and it is still something that I enjoy very much. I love teaching.

A huge part of my life in Trinidad has been devoted to teaching ballet and that has made me very happy indeed.”

Bentley explained how it all began: “We only met in 1970, when Trinidad was in a state of emergency. Helena decided to leave Trinidad.

“So Averil and I got together. We became partners and started the Bentley-Potter School of Dance.”

The Bentley-Potter School of Dance initially used the Trinidad Country Club as the venue and then they rented spaces for the dance classes.

“Then we started teaching in all sorts of different places,” says Bentley.

“It was very difficult to find suitable premises because you must have a wooden floor, preferably a sprung floor. You absolutely cannot teach on concrete or tiles because it can lead to knee and back injuries. So we taught in church halls, Stollmeyer’s Castle, Roxy and clubs or wherever was available.”

Classical ballet now has its own home at a permanent location in Cascade. Bentley and Potter established a school which has two dance studios, a lobby, a dressing room and a costume room. “Finally we decided to get our own place. In 1994, we found a piece of land in Cascade and we held fund-raisers and so on to build the school. To have our own premises is just fantastic.”

Bentley teaches the younger grades and Potter teachers the senior students. There are classes for each age range and they are assessed before they advance to the next grade. “Pre-primary beginners enroll at about four years old to age five. From primary at age six, they start taking their first annual exam from the Royal Academy of Dance to move up through the grades. Then we have Grade 1 right up to Grade 8 for pre-teens. Normally, those that are talented will also do major work.”

Bentley explained that grade work is more pleasurable and pertains to more dancing, but the major work is grueling training to strengthen the body. “The major work involves exercises to strengthen various parts of the body like the feet, ankles and the legs and arms. Point work and all that to help with pirouettes, port de bras and turns. Because posture, poise and presentation is very important.”

According to Potter: “Our classical ballet syllabus is based on the criteria of the Royal Dance Academy. The academy emphasizes the training of the body. So the children are trained carefully and gently, so that their bodies to do not experience any stress or strain.”

The ballet class is an hour or more long on evenings. It begins with exercises and postures, then the students have a free movement session and the last quarter of the class the students perform dances from different countries.

Potter’s daughter Caroline is also a ballet teacher. She trained at the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance which was established by the famous ballerina Mary Rambert. She spent a number of years performing with the Vienna Festival Ballet.

Potter explained that ballet molds the children into well rounded and well mannered human beings: “For me, the key point is the students learn to be appreciative, disciplined and respectful of themselves, their teachers and the art form. And this is just not for the studio. It washed over into their general demeanor, so they carry themselves nicely.”

Over the years the school has held a number of school productions and they have also collaborated with other groups like the Trinidad and Tobago Light Operatic Society and the Love Movement. Students of the Bentley-Potter School of Dance have appeared in classics like Carmen, Figaro, The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty.

Potter stated that: “The school has become a centre for dance. We teach classical ballet, but we rent out the space to other dance groups that teach hip hop, contemporary and jazz. So it has been lovely to have different forms of dance on our premises.”

On June 19 and 20, the Bentley-Potter School of Dance staged the Cascade Festival Ballet at Queen’s Hall. There were 12 performances including classical, Spanish, Irish and Swan Lake. In November, the Bentley-Potter School will commemorate their 40th anniversary with a show called “Celebration”.