Every issue will feature about seven articles – sometimes a snippet and sometimes the entire thing. If it’s a snippet, there’ll be a link to the rest of the article on one of the WholeNina websites. The topics will cover physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health in one way or another. That’s a pretty wide range of topics!

There’ll also be a recommendation to try out a service or product provided by someone whose work I can personally endorse. There may be a public service announcement if a friend or colleague needs to get out a message widely. And there may be a quote from one of my favourite authors, if there’s space.

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Nina Shoroplova

I wasn’t always a tapper. For many years, I was just a wannabe tap dancer. There were only a few opportunities to watch tap dancing when I grew up in Wales: Sunday afternoon television in the fifties comprised an American movie, sometimes a musical. And if it were a musical, there was sometimes tap dancing. I always loved the tap dancing. I loved the rhythms, the sounds, the energy, the whole raw physicality of it. I was full of admiration too.

Then, living in Australia in the first half of the eighties and performing in several music halls (singing, dancing, acting), both in the small town of Walcha in New England and in the university town of Armidale, I had an opportunity to reconnect with my admiration of tap dancing. The brilliant team of Jim Graham (librettist and director) and David Reeves (musical director) at The Armidale School (TAS) created one successful Queen Victoria Music Hall after another, with such unlikely titles as “How Dotty Got Finished Off” and “For the Turn of his Natural Wife.” (On that occasion, I was the wife.” Great fun! Armidale was just 65 kilometres away – a mere one-hour drive – from our sheep and cattle property in Walcha, just enough time in the car to practice singing the tricky entry timings of “Tell Me Pretty Maiden” and get them right.

Graham and Reeves also collaborated on an original play in 1983 called “Choices,” written specifically for His Royal Highness, Prince Edward, to whom Graham had taught English earlier when the Prince had attended Gordonstoun. The Prince was making difficult choices in 1983, and the play that Jim wrote for a private visit by the Prince to the school centred on that pivotal time in everyone’s life, when a person leaves school and has to choose a career path. It was wonderful to be in the audience for the “private visit” by the Prince! Later in the eighties, Graham and Reeves were involved (Graham – concept and Reeves – music, executive producer, and orchestral arrangements) in a professional production of Seven Little Australians, which enjoyed moderate success in Melbourne, Sydney, and elsewhere, “despite a natural Aussie cynicism.”

But I’m getting off topic. One of the acts in one of the TAS music halls I performed in was a tap dancer – an older man who looked to be a very unlikely candidate to have rhythm in his feet. But he did! And every performance night, audiences would be wowed by this great hoofer. I fell in love with the paradiddles all over again.

And so it was a natural turn of events in 2004 that my eyes opened wide when I read an audition notice by Surrey Little Theatre for parts in Stepping Out by Richard Harris, to be directed by Dwayne Campbell and choreographed by Jacqollyne Keath. This is how the notice read:

Surrey Little Theatre holds auditions for Stepping Out by Richard Harris, July 12 and 14 at 7027 – 184th St., at 7 p.m. Needed are nine women aged 19 – 60, one black woman aged 30 – 45, and one man aged 35 – 45. Some experience in dance or tap an asset, but not essential. Non-tappers will be given instruction. Call 604-436-5516. The production runs Nov. 4 to Dec. 4.

On the Saturday morning, I headed off to one of the dance supply stores on the West Side, tried on several pairs of tap shoes for the first time ever, slipped and slid all over the place, bought a pair, and that afternoon, teaming up with a couple of other performers – one a pianist and one a tap teacher – headed out to Surrey for the audition.

I love auditions. They’re such an opportunity to be different from whom you are in everyday life. On this occasion, I was really being someone different, because I was pretending to be a tap dancer and trying to follow Jacqollyne’s simple choreography. Simple for some, but not for me, even though I’d done Scottish country dancing as a girl and a few times since!

Anyhow, in spite of my ineptness in my tap shoes, Dwayne cast me as “Vera” and my two friends as “Mrs. Fraser” and “Rose,” and there began one hot summer of learning the intricacies of the shuffle ball change, the cramproll, and the buffalo, on Surrey Little Theatre’s stage in what-felt-like 90° heat. Slowly, bit by bit, I learned how to tap and to do the choreography required for the show. Luckily my character had an inflated view of her own ability as a tapper, so I could act like I knew what I was doing when everyone could see I didn’t!

The show was a great success and our cast of 10 – the one man and nine women – won a Community Theatre Coalition Fraser Valley Zone Award for best ensemble cast.

Since then I’ve been hooked on tap. I did drop in tap at Harbour Dance Centre with Jennifer Bishop for a couple of years. She’s since opened a studio of her own – The Rhythm Room – and the drop-ins on Saturdays are with Jim Hibberd. Jim has an outstanding professional biography, is as personable as you would want and very gentle in his coaching style, luckily for me, still learning how to do a time step!

When I started going to Jim’s drop-in class, I wondered why I had ever stopped dropping in! And then one of the regulars reminded me that I’d stopped because my knee had been hurting! Wow! I don’t even remember having a sore knee. And I’ve had nothing sore since I graduated as a holistic nutritionist, probably because I’ve been cleansing all year and I’m in good health. Hats off to good nutrition! But what got me started again was reading some of Dr. Daniel Amen’s books about brain health and acting on his recommendation to dance on a regular basis to improve brain health. What better dancing is there than tap dancing?

Gotta go find my tap shoes. See ya!

Nina

We also decided we would like to go and see a fortune teller. Which we did.

Either Penny or Sue had heard of a woman who lived on Cathedral Road in the ground floor of one of those rather forbidding three-storey houses.

If memory serves, it had a bell pull for the entrance buzzer rather than a push bell and the front door opened on to a hall way with a staircase ahead and rooms with closed doors to the left. The inside of the room where the psychic read our fortunes was covered in heavy dark fabrics, with a fabric curtain attached to the door by a curtain rod. I decided this was to keep the readings very, very secret. It was the sort of place where you would expect black cats to jump out of every corner any moment. I seem to remember sitting on the edge of the seat, too nervous to relax and enjoy the event. My friends waited outside for their turn, eager teenagers, about to hear their future.

This psychic asked if she could hold something that I always wore – a ring or a watch or something. I think we knew ahead of time that this is how she would do the reading – using psychometry. I took off a slim gold ring that had been an item I had received from an aunt’s estate. I passed her the ring and the reading started.

It was quite short; it seemed rather vague at the time; but it was very accurate. From what I remember, she said I would travel across water to live far away, in green fields. She also said I would have three rings. I don’t remember any more than that.

And indeed I did end up travelling across water to live far away in green fields, because in June 1969, I emigrated to Canada for six months, six months that became a lifetime, and I moved to Douglas Lake Cattle Ranch. Okay, the fields weren’t often very green, because Douglas Lake in the Nicola Valley is a desert, but the fields that were irrigated for growing hay were definitely green. And I did end up having three rings – I was engaged once, which didn’t work out, and I’m now married for the second time.

Could such a reading be accurate for everyone? I don’t think so. And anyway, the readings that my friends had were different from mine. And they still live in Great Britain.

Through that reading, slim as it was, I had just viewed an ethereal wisp of something I couldn’t explain, and I was intrigued. I kept my mind open for the next wisp.

Nina

Here’s a youtube video in which he talks about depression not being a single disorder but just a symptom that could be related to a wide range of actual disorders.

And here’s another youtube video of Dr. Amen (there are so many, I thought it would be helpful if I preselected a few), in which he describes the crazy fact that psychiatrists are the only medical doctors who don’t consider the biology of the organ they’re treating.

Dr. Amen does, in fact, look at the brains of the people he treats, through SPECT images. They’re very convincing and so is he. Dr. Amen believes in prescribing natural treatments to his patients before he prescribes psychiatric medication, such natural supplements as fish oil, SAMe, 5HTP, St. John’s Wort, and Ginkgo Biloba.

If you know of anyone who is depressed, realize that something more than strange emotions might be going on for them. Their actual brain activity might be changed – overactive or underactive compared to other people. While SPECT scans are not available here, there is a Registered Holistic Nutritionist™ who graduated with a Masters of Science in Neuroscience from the University of British Columbia in 2008: Orsolya Magyar. She’s on the faculty of the Vancouver branch of the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition and specializes in nutritional consultations for people with disorders related to the brain. So, if you can’t get in to see Dr. Amen down in California, contact Orsha in Vancouver to arrange an appointment.