FEATURE PROFILE
Dancing with Fire! The Deepings Dancing School has existed since the 1950s but since 1985 it has been synonymous with its inspirational Principal, Marina Palmer, who took over the school from its founder, Gwen Wilbourne. From 1985 to 2020 Marina was the driving force of the school, not to mention being the ‘prima ballerina’, choreographer and chief administrator. But how did it happen that a ‘born and bred’ London girl should leave the metropolis and find herself, years later, running a dance school in rural Lincolnshire? An old Russian saying has it that, ‘to live your life is not as simple as to cross a field’, and it certainly isn’t! Marina was born in Dulwich, London, of a Northern Irish mother and an English father. There was musical talent on her mother’s side of the family (including the famous tenor, Joseph Locke), and Marina’s mother played a number of different instruments. Marina started dancing classes early, at the age of three. It soon became clear that she was ‘a natural’ and before she was in her teens she had gone through some of London’s most prestigious dance schools and was trained in ballet, tap and acrobatics. Unsurprisingly, to dance on the stage became her ambition. Her first chance to appear with professionals in London Variety theatres came in 1948-49
when a Christmas/New Year show, entitled ‘Sauce Tartare’, was staged at the Cambridge Theatre in London’s West End. Marina auditioned and gained a place in the chorus and this was memorable as it was the time when Marina appeared on stage together with the 19-year-old Audrey Hepburn who was in the senior group! Not yet in her teens, permission had to be given by her school board for Marina to miss some days of schooling. The following year Marina was again chosen to appear in the Christmas show – called ‘Sauce Piquante’; the cast included a number of actors who were to become the comic and variety stars of the 1950s and 60s, including Norman Wisdom, Bob Monkhouse, Moira Lister and Margaret Lawford. In the years that followed Marina appeared regularly in pantomime in many of the London theatres from Brixton to Richmond, Clapham and the Golders Green Hippodrome where the well-known comics of the day also performed. The comedian, Charlie Chester, she says, gave her some of the best advice she ever received about, especially, the timing of the different aspects of her act – for Marina’s act soon expanded to include, as well as dancing, also contortion and fire-eating! Not everyone would have been happy about their spouse performing fire-eating on stage. Marina and Ken married young, at 18 and 21 respectively, and Ken was at first opposed to the idea of Marina doing any fire-eating.
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Marina Palmer with boxer Henry Cooper
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