Iconic ballet teacher given lifetime achievement award

There’s huge satisfaction when your pupils go on to achieve, and so for 84-year-old retired ballet teacher Bernice Lloyd, having movie star Charlize Theron; Tanya Howard, principal soloist at the Canadian Ballet; and ballerina Kitty Phetla as former pupils gives her much pleasure.

But this month, the ballet world recognised Lloyd for all she had done in her 58-year career as a ballet teacher, giving her the Lifetime Achievement Award at the International Ballet Competition in Cape Town on 17 July.

When Lloyd heard from Dirk Badenhorst, who runs the competition, that she was going to receive the award, she was shocked.

“I thought people had forgotten about me since I stopped teaching in 2020,” Lloyd said, “But this award shows that they haven’t, and I’m being recognised for the amazing work that I have done. It feels good to be recognised by the ballet community.

“I’m filled with pride to see how the influence of the discipline of ballet reached heights locally and abroad, with generations of aspiring ballerinas keeping close contact. I’m still being asked to choreograph pieces here and there,” Lloyd told the SA Jewish Report.

“It was an amazing experience. I was flown down to Cape Town to attend the gala at the Artscape Opera House. It was also amazing that the pride of my life – my daughter and grandchildren – were with me and saw me receive this massive award.

“One of my ex-pupils, Lisa Alhadeff Berg, flew from America to enter her son, Max, in the South African International Ballet Competition” Lloyd said. “The young man won a gold medal in the senior classical and contemporary section. It was beautiful to see the love for ballet passed down through the generations.”

Lloyd caught the ballet bug when her mother introduced her to it at just five years old, and has been enchanted by it ever since. She danced until she was 16, and then joined the Spanish Dance Company, with which she toured Europe and North Africa when she was 17 years old.

“When I came back, I decided I preferred ballet as an art, and started teaching – and didn’t stop until I hung up my ballet shoes in 2020,” said Lloyd.

She ran the Bernice Lloyd School of Ballet in Forest Town, Johannesburg, for 58 years, training hundreds of girls and boys, starting from the age of 10, to create amazing dancers. Now, even though she’s retired, she is still being asked by private ballet teachers for help with choreography.

Outside of her studio, Lloyd also taught dance at the National School of the Arts in Johannesburg as well as at Hoërskool Die Kruin, the Afrikaans arts school.

Speaking of the many dancers she trained who have become world-renowned for their achievements, she said, “It’s such a wonderful feeling that they have gone on to do such amazing things. It gives me pride that they are using their ballet skills and discipline in their careers.”

The highlight of her ballet career, she said, was teaching the hundreds of children that flowed through her studio doors.

“Seeing the children grow up into responsible adults, whether they pursued ballet or not, I knew that in the back of their mind, they would keep the discipline that they learned through ballet for the rest of their lives,” said Lloyd.

“I worked hard to inspire children to love the art form. So when you see them enjoying themselves while dancing, it’s a wonderful experience.”

Lloyd would teach until 19:00 every night. She didn’t use a syllabus because she believed “a syllabus doesn’t make a dancer as you don’t get a vocabulary of steps through a syllabus alone”.

She didn’t stop at teaching her pupils the steps, but would teach them the history of dance, music appreciation, and anatomy.

In spite of the hard and exhausting work of teaching every day for 58 years, Lloyd was always reminded of her love for the art form.

“My love for ballet has kept me going for so long,” she said. “I was able to ignore all of the horrible parts associated with it when I was able to create these beautiful pieces of choreography and pass down the love of ballet to generations of young girls and boys.

“In spite of all the challenges of running a studio, I loved it, and loved to see the results. I always got excellent results. The children were happy, and it was just lovely,” she said.