One more dance for Mary Hatch, 88
Hatch spent her life dancing, but declining health means she may only have a few more steps left
Nobody was sure Mary Hatch would be able to stand up and move around the dance floor. But with some help, she slowly got to her feet, reached out for the young man waiting, and started to move to the music.
Applause broke out from employees at the dance studio, as well as care home staff who accompanied Hatch, 88, and a few friends.
The song playing was the 1960 classic, Never on Sunday — Hatch's special request.
When that ended, everyone expected her to slide back into her wheelchair. Instead, she kept dance instructor Timothy Peters in her arms, and danced to a second song.
"I started crying," said Leslie Torresan, the recreation manager at Normanna, the Burnaby care facility where Hatch has lived for two years.
Concerned about her failing health, Normanna staff arranged the afternoon dance outing Thursday at the Arthur Murray studio in Coquitlam.
"I'm so so happy for her, because I know she was nervous. I knew that she really wanted to get up," said Torresan. "I'm sure she was a little bit afraid, but the fact that she got up — Oh, we're just thrilled for her."
Hatch spent her life as a dancer and she's been a bit of a star at the care home. She swept the dance floor at every wedding, according to her granddaughter Sasha Perret, and once had a bright career as a professional dancer on stage.
But staff at the care home have noticed her health quickly sliding. In the last couple months she's gone from using a walker to a wheelchair.
"She's just getting a little bit weaker," said Torresan. "This is why we felt the urgency to really get this to happen, so she could experience it."
It's possible that this was Hatch's last dance, and almost a certainty she wouldn't get her feet onto another wooden dance floor.
In the late 1940s, Hatch's dance career took off.
It's all in the picture book she brought to the Coquitlam dance studio, which she flipped though with her granddaughter.
There are her days with Ballet B.C., the years she spent on stage at Stanley Park's Malkin Bowl in Theatre Under the Stars productions, her work in Victoria, and the time she toured across the country.
There are newspaper clippings with glowing photos of her and her stage mates, and she recalls the time she performed as a backup dancer for a young Sammy Davis Jr., when he gigged in Vancouver.
"I've always known her to be Ballet Grandma. That's actually my name for her — I don't even call her Grandma, I call her Ballet Grandma," said Perret.
If you ask Hatch what she remembers most about her dance career, she'll tell you it was the hard work.
"Many years of training," she said.
Torresan wanted Hatch to get one more taste of the glamour and movement that has been a part of her whole life.
She arranged a free limousine ride to the studio, complete with champagne.
"This morning Mary was up early. She got her makeup done and her hair done. She was picking out what she was going to wear — a lot of anxiety, a lot of excitement and anticipation," said Torresan.
Hatch knows how to play the role of the star. In the limo she had dazzling nails, makeup, and a white fur coat. At just the right moment, she waved to the camera.
"Oh, it was fun," she said. "Very special."
Follow Rafferty Baker on Twitter: @raffertybaker
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