As a little girl transfixed by the ballerina on her music box, Ursula Robb made a wish – that she could learn to dance. Not only did her wish come true, she now has the best of both worlds – teaching accomplished ballet dancers in France and living as a housewife and mother in rural New Zealand.
Growing up on an ohakune farm in the 1970s, learning to dance had seemed impossible with no ballet teacher in the area.
But now, living part of the year in Kapiti and part teaching in Paris, Ursula (41) is thankful that she dared to dream big.
“I just loved ballet. I had books on it and loved the little ballerinas on music boxes,” she remembers.
When a ballet teacher in Taihape travelled to ohakune to offer a dance class when Ursula was nine, there was no holding her back. And now as a teacher at Paris opera Ballet, Ursula’s successful career as a dancer is living proof that dreams can come true.
As she leaves New Zealand again, her glamorous life in Paris seems worlds away from the one she leads as devoted wife to builder Lorcan Birchall and mum to Fionn (2) and Alexandra (4) on the Kapiti Coast.
But neither Ursula nor Lorcan could resist the offer last month of an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris for their family to live in a rent-free apartment.
It’s the peak of a long dancing career, which saw Ursula study contemporary dance in Wellington as a teenager before winning a place in 1995 at the Belgium dance company, Rosas.
“It was very glamorous, performing all over the world,” she recalls. “You have amazing after-show functions with fabulous clothes and great Champagne, and you’re meeting all these dignitaries.
“I was paid really well as a dancer in Europe – I bought my own apartment in Brussels. once you reach that level you are treated really well.”
But in 2005, after 10 years overseas, Ursula felt it was time to return home to New Zealand with her family. She thought being a full-time mum would be simple, but she was mistaken.
“I ended up being incredibly busy as a stay-at-home mum. I think it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But every year I’ve spent a few months back in Belgium doing a big burst of teaching.
“I thought I could watch daytime TV at home but I ended up getting hooked on infomercials and buying a steam mop, so I turned the TV off, thinking, ‘This cannot be what my life has become’.”
Then, Ursula got the call back to the glamorous world of dancing. The Paris opera Ballet wanted to perform a contemporary piece which Ursula danced at Rosas and they wanted her to teach them how to dance it.
“I’m thrilled – it’s so exciting,” she says. “It’s an honour to work for such incredible dancers. Paris is a place where you can think, ‘Wow, I’ve really made it’.”
The dance, called Rain, is an abstract piece inspired by New Zealand writer Kirsty Gunn’s novel of the same name.
“The set is an oval and has huge tassled ropes from floor to ceiling which shimmer, like water,” Ursula explains.
Ursula will be instructing the Paris opera Ballet dancers for two months before returning to New Zealand to teach dance at Unitec in Auckland later this year. And she knows that she can always slot back into the New Zealand way of life.
“I was brought up on a farm and it’s not that odd for me any more to go from something down-to-earth, to dancing in Europe,” she says. “Both those worlds are my worlds somehow. I don’t feel like I belong only in one.”
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