Nora Morrison: A lifetime dedicated to dance
"My life has been all work but I've loved it; dance was all I've ever wanted to do. I've had very little free time," says long-serving Nottingham dance teacher Nora Morrison, who has been a guiding light to dancers in this city for seven decades, although she will not discuss her age. "I've got more time on my hands now than I've ever had, and I don't like it, to be honest with you."
To the passer-by, Miss Morrison looks like a glamorous yet frail elderly lady, who requires a motorised chair to get around outdoors.
But to the many hundreds of pupils who have passed through her school, she is a figure of great strength and inspiration, who still manages to personally tutor a roll of 50 dance pupils five days a week and will command them in a Christmas show next month.
It is nothing short of extraordinary when you consider there are those who remember taking lessons with her in the 1940s, and possibly earlier.
She admits to having seen three generations of one family through her dance tutelage (a grandmother, mother and her daughter); she has sent pupils into professional careers in the West End, the Royal Ballet Company, film and television; and she has raised more than £75,000 at her charitable dance shows throughout the years for the Nottinghamshire Royal Society for the Blind. It is a cause that has benefited from her life almost as much as dance itself.
The amazing story begins when her grandfather, the architect and builder James Robert Morrison, was developing the Gregory Boulevard area of Hyson Green.
He built a house in Nottingham for his family, including his only son Robert Stuart Morrison, but sadly died after being thrown from a horse when Robert was just 16.
Unfortunately, Mr Morrison Snr had largely signed his worldly goods over to a lawyer, and only the house remained for young Robert, who was luckily befriended by the Shipstones family and given a job at their Nottingham brewery.
He continued to live in the house his father had built, married a girl from Buxton called Mary, and the pair raised three girls there; Violet and Tess were born close together and Nora 14 years later.
"Tess was very keen on dancing; she took lessons and took me along when I was just two," remembers Miss Morrison, who continued to live there with her spinster sisters until they died some years ago. She now has a live-in carer.
"My mother was very concerned about my education and was pleased when I won a scholarship to Bluecoat School, but Tess saw that I kept up my dancing.
"I didn't have one particular dance teacher until I found a very gifted one, Miss Betty Sissons, who sadly died. Her mother, Mrs May Sissons, asked if I would help her keep the dance school open.
"I did help her, but at the same time I studied. Once a month I travelled to the Royal Academy of Dance in London to do my teaching qualifications and exams, and we had a studio at home where Tess continued to teach me more than anybody.
"Between dance training, Bluecoat School, and The Betty Sissons School, I'd got no time for anything else."
When Nora, then a young woman, finished her final diploma to teach dancing, she was under pressure from her parents to 'stand on her own two feet.'
"So Tess and I started the Morrison School of Dancing," she said.
They hired a room on Mansfield Road to teach dance classes, which took off straight away, but meanwhile Nora was under pressure from her concerned mum to get a 'proper' job.
"The Nottingham Blind Institution (now the Nottinghamshire Royal Society for the Blind), then in Clarendon Street, was looking for a girl to help in the teaching department. I didn't want to be a teacher – I wanted dancing – but I agreed to act as a teaching assistant to the 16 teachers employed there."
The dance school continued to grow and moved into rooms at Bluecoat School. The sisters were busy, with Nora doing all the dance teaching and Tess – who also had a job as an accountant – designing costumes, set building and offering a critical eye.
Miss Morrison remembered: "I loved the dancing, choreography and arranging shows. We didn't do much advertising, but it quickly grew to capacity.
"I was very busy. I would go to the Blind centre in the morning, but the rest of the day I was at the dance school, seven days a week.
"Eventually the Blind centre committee persuaded me to take the teaching exams, and I came out with the top result in all of England! So they made me supervisor of all the teachers, although I was much younger than they were. But I found it much harder than dancing, when I could just switch off and it felt so natural. Really it was too much on top of the dancing, but I stayed because I loved spending time with the blind people so much. I only gave up my work with the blind about eight years ago."
Miss Morrison extended her academic teaching of the blind to include specialised dance lessons too.
As decades passed, the Morrison School of Dancing saw hundreds of young people through its doors, produced a lot of very successful pupils, and performed a show most years at The Playhouse.
Miss Morrison worked daily from 9am until 10pm or later, and forfeited boyfriends and socialising as a result.
"If I had gone down a different road, I probably would have got married and had a very different life, but it didn't interest me. I loved the dancing."
It wasn't a lucrative career even in its heyday, and now – as numbers have gradually dwindled with time – Miss Morrison freely admits she funds the school and not vice versa.
"We never charged a lot of money, and the overheads were so expensive that I never lived off the school. My motivation was always to instil the love of dance as a form of expression they could use throughout their lives. Luckily, my father left us comfortably provided for. My parents had seen the school's success and they were proud."
Eventually the school moved to rooms at the Blind centre in Clarendon Street. The building was later sold to the city council, which continues to rent the rooms to the Morrison School of Dancing.
In her later years, Miss Morrison suffered a fall and had a hip replacement which affected her balance, but she is still a hugely respected dance teacher to this day, with students ranging from children to professional adults.
"One of my students was 49 last week! And I have three doctors on the books. They are beautiful dancers and could've been professionals if they weren't doctors."
And Miss Morrison has no intention of stopping now; even when she had to spend a stint in The Firs nursing home recently, she carried on running her lessons from the gym! She will go back to The Firs with her students in December to put on a Christmas show for the residents.
"I still teach classes five days a week for several hours.
"Tess died in 2003, and the grief gets worse not better. I think more about it every night. But she said to me as she was dying, 'Don't give the school up!' I know I shall have to one day, but for now I won't give up."
Nora Morrison with Sophie and Larissa Hayes
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