I started dancing in Trinidad. So I always say to people, ‘Europe did not make me a dancer.’ I was a dancer when I came here. What I learned here was different styles, different technique. I never wanted to be a dancer, I wanted to enter the dance. Because for me, to dance is to live. I was technically very good. When I was training, one of the things we do when you’re training is that at the end of term, you're in different people's work. Nobody chose me. I got into different things. I didn't have a work permit. I then did go-go dancing because I had to make money. I actually did not know very much about the profession because I come from a little village. In fact, had I been brought up in the town, I think I would [have been] more sophisticated and knowing all that kind of stuff. And technically I was supposed to leave here, three years of training and then go back home, because I was on a scholarship. I was trying to get released from the Trinidad government because I'm saying three years in an institution doesn't really teach you. You know, it would be good if you release me for two years so I go into the industry itself and find out and discover, because that's when you begin to really learn and stuff. I didn't fit in to anything. Eartha Kitt talks about it a lot. When you were our colour and the black consciousness started, we did not fit in because we were too pale. So when they wanted black, they wanted black. Now when you enter the space is very visibly black. When I enter, you're not sure: is she Spanish, is she this? So in the eighties and stuff I didn't really fit in. So I fitted in to the white aesthetic, or the consciousness of after the sixties and seventies and all that kind of revolution of black, black, black, black, I walked in, nothing about me fitted and wasn't even talked about very much.
I got very, very ill which affected my ability to dance on the level I can. Because I got very, very weak. At one point, they thought I had MS. I was dragging. Somebody actually said I went like from being in a sports car to a jalopy, you know. I had no power, and the tragedy is - and now this has changed - nobody came and said, ‘Something is wrong with Greta.’ ‘Let's help Greta heal’. You know, people will still meet me on the street and say, ‘Oh, why aren't you phoning me for a job?’ ‘Why aren't you doing this?’ You know, people always looking to me for employment and stuff. I think that's why I never got back on my legs, that's why my body has just done this. But it's a deep soul pain in my gut, in my soul, because basically I feel my destiny was to come onto this earth to dance at that level. When people say to me, ‘Greta, when you danced, it was like shards of lightning coming out.’ Dick Matchett said, ‘You just moved with so much clarity and speed. Your speed work was just… it was so clear.’ And dance saved me as a child because I had a very unhappy childhood. I don't feel I'm alive unless I'm dancing.
In the seventies and eighties, you had very little or no support systems and structures to say, ‘This is an artist, this is somebody who is profound on a stage, let us not put her in that leadership role, let's just develop.’ As a dancer, but also as an artist. I was brought up to think [that] if I think of myself, I'm being selfish. So I didn't have enough in my background to go - excuse my language - ‘Piss on all of this shit. Let me move out of this. And physician heal thyself. How would you want to give to the world? You want to train all these people? You want to give to all these people? What do you need?’ And we still have that. Because I saw a lot of young black artists, they're still having to take on so much before they become. Before we as a society have nurtured them. So they're having to produce, having to run things and having to do.
The last time I went for an audition, it was the last one I went for. It was at the Royal Opera House. As I entered the rehearsal room for the audition, the director said, ‘Oh, no, she's too pale.’ And that was it. Even when Dawn French’s producer called me, I said no.
I was an advocate for it: I was fighting to get independent dance on the field, but also to get black dance. I went to the meetings, I stood up and spoke; all of that. So one of [my] proudest moments, I felt, was when Adzido [Pan African Dance Ensemble] packed out Sadler's Wells, and the place rocked. The hard work had paid off. From then on, no Arts Council could say, ‘Well, there's no audience coming.’ And it wasn't a little backstreet community centre, it was Sadler’s Wells. MAAS Movers also did that. We packed out audiences wherever we went. And it proved that there was a need and a hunger for black contemporary dance. MAAS Movers went everywhere! I mean, we, together with Jeanette Springer, we packed out the Crucible, we were in Leeds, we were in Bristol at the Arnolfini. We went and we became a hot property. Everybody wanted us because they didn't have to work hard to get the audiences in.
I am a powerful bitch. But power is your pain and your vulnerability as well. To be powerful, you have to show and have that pain and that vulnerability, and I have that ability to release my pain in that 0.01 of a second and grab it back. So power is not being all stoic and locked. Power is about opening up and letting that river of pain and joy and hallelujah flood through as well. I can be very, very scary. Because passion. I'm a passionate human being, fundamentally, with all the complexities of that. I am a powerful bitch because I live my passion. I speak truth in the moment. I don't know what tomorrow is. It might be a lie in the next moment. But all I'm saying is what I feel in that moment. I don't mind being vulnerable, and people slamming me down.
Before I die, I would like for black people - and they have some people who are doing it - to truly celebrate the work that really comes from the black voice, the black aesthetic, the black visibility. Because right now, we still celebrate - whether we want to acknowledge it or not - what comes from the white aesthetic. I want us to be able to see value for ourselves. We don't need the white aesthetic to say you are good. We need us to be brave and proud enough to stand up and go, ‘That's really good’. I don't have to do Shakespeare to prove that I am good. I don't have to do Othello. We need to get rid of the mindset that you get an Oscar, you want to play James Bond - why aren't we creating our own characters and going, ‘I love that’? We don't look at the art, the history, the stories of Africa and bring it to the fore. And that's also because of funding to be very honest. Because if you try, they don’t know the references. That’s where I wish for us to reach: that we don't think because a black person does ballet that they are better than a black person who does some African form of dancing. And we are nowhere near there yet. We don’t need to defer, we don’t need to qualify our own excellence.
If you want to be an actor, just explore acting to the nth degree. Find and release that hallelujah in your being. Don’t try to take on too much. One of the things I learned is you can't solve the world's problems. You can't be a voice for everybody. But all you have to be is true. Be true to your art, to yourself. And express that the best you can and listen to that voice, the voice of that creativity. We all try to be everything to everybody. And the reality is we cannot be. Choose.
Explore that invisible crying voice inside of you, that’s knocking you - that is what you want to explore. What is that voice trying to say to you? Listen to that voice inside of you, who wants to come out and wants to speak. But don't go out into the universe and kill that original voice. Because we are all born with an original voice. Find a way to let that begin to emerge and release into the biosphere. Until you do that, we all end up mediocre aspects of what we potentially could be. When you look at David Bowie, and all of them, they just explored whatever the shit came to them. And he didn't try to be everything. But he tried to find the artist in himself. And that's why it lives on.
But it's not just for the young people: it’s to the young people's families. If they get families that will support them, and see - all parents need to see their child's vision, and celebrate and encourage them in it. We are training our people to go out and get jobs rather than just finding that steam and stem within them and supporting them in every way we can. Without the support of the families, no matter what you want to say to young people, it ain't going to happen. And they can't do it alone. You cannot do it alone, you need support structures, and therefore families have to become involved.