With his tall slender body and elegant gait, Mark Elie looks every inch a dancer. However, these days long retired from the stage, he is using the art form to transform the lives of children whose stories he knows well.

Like them he grew up in the inner city. In his case during the 1960s in London’s Westminster Children’s Home, although his Dominican father Francis Elie would regularly pick him up at the weekend. He knows very little about his mother who left when he was two years old.

“There were five of us in the children’s home on the Warwick estate in little Venice and we all came from separate families. I had an older sister who was Caucasian called Sheila, Timmy also white, but who sadly has passed, my mixed-race sister Rita, and our little brother Tony, who was Rita’s blood brother,”  Elie explained.

“The Children’s home encouraged me and gave me the access to do what I loved. At the age of 10, I got a scholarship to go to the Ballet Rambert School in London and graduated in 1979 and then I started my career at 17.” 

After graduation Elie worked with the Dance Theatre of Harlem in the 1980s and the Ballet Gulbenkian in Lisbon before returning to London where he turned to commercial work and performing in West End plays after finding few opportunities for Black and mixed race ballet dancers.

Later, he joined a friend and fellow dancer Carol Straker at the school she had founded. When it closed due to lack of funding, Elie decided to venture out on his own, opening the Portobello Dance & Performing Arts School and the Mark Elie Foundation in 1995. In 2003, he founded the Classically British Ballet to give professional performances.

Elie said the school was set up to provide access to affordable education tuition in dance to low income families. “The basis of our work is inner city dance, which is about gathering all children who want to dance, but particularly those underprivileged children and giving them an opportunity they might not have had.” 

Funding remains a challenge, Elie said. “I had to, and still do, raise the money myself as the Arts Council does not fund me. I have to go to philanthropists, friends and corporate people and beg for money. Yes, it is hard.” He hopes that he can establish a partnership with Sadler’s Wells, the “home” of British ballet, which will provide ongoing funding for the school.

“I want to push British Black with a classical aesthetic because we have Ballet Black run by Cassa Pancho, [funded by the Arts Council] but that company is full of Brazilians, Cubans and Americans. The one girl who was English is working with me now.”

Elie’s students come from him visiting local schools and by word of mouth. So far around 150 students have gone through the programme, some achieving great success. 

“Now I have people in my company like Leighton Williams [Jamie & Billy Elliot –  The West End Theatre and TV show Bad Education]. He is one of my dancers. Leighton is one of the biggest artists in London at the moment.

“I would say my poster dancer would be Kim Alexander. She trained with me. She went to the Rambert School, where I went, and she got into the Rambert Company where she was soloist and principal dancer. I have many proteges and I am very proud of her. She went right through my system starting as a student and finishing as a principal ballerina.”

Meanwhile, Elie hopes to leave a lasting impact on the world of ballet. “My legacy will be, hopefully the thousands of children that would have passed through our doors having had a really lovely experience learning the language of classical ballet at the Portobello Dance & Performing Arts School. And all the imagery and footage that I have collected over the years will be archived which I am working on at the moment.”

Join the Classically British & Co as it celebrates 21 years with a performance on Thursday 24th October 2024 at Lillian Bayliss Studios, Sadler’s Wells Theatre.

https://www.sadlerswells.com/whats-on/classically-british-and-co-celebrating-21-years/#book