Edna and Dancing
Edna Hughes was a talented dancer. Not the leaping-all-over-the stage stuff but the really disciplined art of tap and step dancing.
Her father, John Hughes, danced with his brother, Jack, as a step-dancing duo in the 1930's and it was he who taught Edna the basic rudiments of step dancing. Their small terraced house in Rokeby Street, just below Everton Brow in Liverpool, had a kitchen floor whose slate flagstones would ring to tap and step lessons. Edna recounted how her father taught her the basic steps on this hard surface, often making her repeat step patterns over and over until her feet were sore. However it was only when she teamed up with her cousin, Betty Hughes, that she began to turn heads.
Billed as the "Hughes Sisters; the Girls with the Educated Feet" they began to devise intricate routines to basic piano sets that first of all saw them perform at the Littlewoods Pools Talent Shows but then, in the early 1940's, at The David Lewis Theatre, Liverpool, a large venue that staged revues and variety shows for servicemen. They often performed two sets during a variety show; complex routines set to a single pianist rendering versions of standards like "Tea for Two", "Narcissus" and "Ain't She Sweet". On one occasion, after changing their usual staid pianist for a more talented and hip musician, they were so popular that they became the toast of Littlewoods for a few weeks. Her workmates were astounded that she had hidden such talent from them all.
A few months before she died, we talked in earnest about how she viewed this time in her life. She said she was never happier than when she was on stage dancing and took great delight in telling me the stories of concerts and applause long gone.
I think the last time she performed publicly was with her friend Joan Hyams in the mid-60's; blacked-up as minstrels, wearing boaters and singing and dancing to "Lily of Laguna".
Over the years the family was often treated to step dancing routines on tables, stone floors and pavements. When she became ill she became too weak to dance which I know upset her deeply. She brought her white tap shoes to dance on the red tiles of our kitchen floor. When she found she could use them no longer she gave them to my daughter Liz who danced for her.
She didn't dance any more.
