I have recently been suffering another crisis of confidence about my capabilities as a dancer. Part of the self-doubt no doubt familiar to most tangueros, the ‘P’ thing adds an extra edge. Today I’m hovering somewhere between feeling motivated by the lives of others and heading for the marmalade. But how hard can it be, really, to get over myself and just make the best of what I have and can do? Time to follow Fred and Ginger and pick myself up, dust myself off, start all over again:
Before the fiddlers have fled,
Before they ask us to pay the bill,
And while we still have that chance
Let’s face the music and dance.
Stephen Moss's interview with Paul Mayhew-Archer 'I wanted to show people with Parkinson's can do comedy' was published in The Guardian on 20 July. The documentary 'Parkinson's: The Funny Side' is available at BBC One Inside Out South.
'Pick Yourself Up' was written in 1936 by Jerome Kern (lyrics by Dorothy Fields) for the film 'Swing Time', which features a Fred Astaire whose 'two feet haven't met yet' apparently struggling to learn to dance with teacher Ginger Rogers
'Let's Face the Music and Dance' from the film 'Follow the Fleet' with Fred and Ginger was written by Irving Berlin, also in 1936.