The way she was.... from Boris Liedtke

There were a lot of press reports when Tanja was appointed artistic director of the Sydney Dance Company – most of them talking about Tanja’s new vision and the courageous move by the board to appoint such a young and relatively inexperienced person to the position.

While Tanja was indeed young, she was certainly not inexperienced. In fact as an older brother, I recall her first role as an artistic director and general manager of a dance company at the age of six. “Age six, you might say – that is below the legal working age.”

Let me elaborate …

Patrick, Tanja and I grew up in a household where our father administered our weekly pocket money like a pay check in a company. Our allowance, while generous, was pretty much all we got to spend and if we wanted to have more, we had to be creative. Washing cars and cutting the lawn gave us a little extra but it was hard work and it soon became our dream to combine the work with something that was actually fun to do.

Patrick and I hit on the idea of organising slot car races between the two of us and charge our parents for watching little plastic cars race around the track in the living room. Needless to say that the novelty wore of sooner than we had hoped for and after the third race, the audience stayed away and the idea was abandoned.

Well, it did not take long before our 6-year old sister Tanja picked up on the idea and perfected it. Instead of slot car races, she reached out to her friends in the neighbourhood and choreographed little drama and dance performances. For days, kids between the ages of 4 and 10 came to our home for rehearsals. Being business minded, she not only invited our mum and dad but instead reached out to every parent of any kid in the play and pre-sold them tickets for the show and trust me, there were as many performers in those shows as kids in the neighbourhood. No one was left out because that is just the way she was.

On show day, our house was full of parents and kids and then Tanja would get her team ready, tell the grown-ups to sit down and order the performers around the little make-shift stage. Everything had to work like clockwork to satisfy her drive for perfection because that is just the way she was.

The shows were almost always a success apart from perhaps the odd forgotten line by a 3-year old actor or a wrong dance turn by a six-year old dancer. Tanja probably made more money in her first show than my brother and I ever made from slot car races. I was never crossed with her from taking our idea and perfecting it. To the contrary, I was happily spending my own hard-earned pocket money to see my little sister’s show.

Come to think of it, I never asked her what she did with all the money from those tickets. Though knowing her, she must have split it all up and distributed it to her performers and helpers starting with the very youngest because that is just the way she was.