Elsa Wells

"Elsa Wells was my Ballroom coach when I was a junior competitor. I remember well my first lesson with her when I was 13 years old. My partner and I arrived with my parents, and while waiting in the foyer we heard this very deep woman’s voice saying to the couple she was teaching in the next room, ‘Excuse me one moment, my next victims have arrived.’ As we shook in our boots, she came out looking as she always did, like the reincarnation of Marlene Dietrich with a ‘head turning’ air of superiority, elegance and beauty."

“She was dressed, as always in a plain black silk blouse and black trousers with black leather Cuban heeled shoes, which although worn today by most ballroom women for teaching, looked very unusual at that time. She proceeded to advise us of the ‘procedure’ that we must remember when we arrived in future, which was that we should walk through the studio and sit in the armchairs on the ‘step-high’ stage, at which point she would draw the curtains."

“During lessons, the parents sat on this stage with the curtains drawn, and periodically Elsa would open them so we could demonstrate a new group or some improvement we had made. At one side of the studio she always had a small table on which stood a china teacup and saucer. Frequently during the lesson, she would take sips. We later discovered that the teacup contained gin, which probably explains why she wore such heavy perfumes. One rather nice touch she had was that she always introduced the previous couple she had taught to her next lesson by saying, ‘Do you know x & y?’ Then usually she would add, ‘I’m very pleased with them.’ The whole experience was something of an age gone by, even at that time. A bit like a scene out of a Noel Coward play or a Merchant Ivory film.”