I Don’t Want to Calm Down
- Gina Greenlee, Author
- Jul 6
- 2 min read
In one of his most viewed TED Talks, the late Ken Robinson told a story that deeply resonated worldwide:
“…the third thing about intelligence is its distinct. I’m doing a new book at the moment called “Epiphany,” which is based on a series of interviews with people about how they discovered their talent. I’m fascinated by how people got there.
“[This book] is prompted by a conversation I had with a wonderful woman who maybe most people have never heard of called Gillian Lynne. She’s a choreographer and everybody knows her work. She did Cats and Phantom the Opera. She’s wonderful. I used to be on the board of the Royal Ballet in England. Gillian and I had lunch and I said, ‘how’d you get to be a dancer?’
“She said it was interesting. When she was at school she was really hopeless. The school in the 1930s wrote to her parents, ‘We think Gillian has a learning disorder.’ She couldn't concentrate. She was fidgeting. I think now they’d say she had ADHD. But this was the 1930s and ADHD hadn’t been invented at this point.
“Gillian went to see this specialist in an oak-paneled room. She was there with her mother, and was led to a chair where she sat on her hands for 20 minutes while this man talked her mother about all the problems Gillian was having at school.
“The doctor sat next to Gillian and said, ‘I have listened to all these things that mother’s told me. I need to speak to her privately.’ So, the doctor said, ‘wait here, we'll be back; we won't be very long.’ The doctor and her mother left Gillian in the room. Before they did, the doctor turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk. When they got out of the room he said to Gillian’s mother, ‘just stand there and watch her.’
“And the minute they left the room Gillian said she was on her feet moving to the music.
“The doctor and her mother watched for a few minutes, and he turned to her mother, and he said ‘You know, Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn’t sick; she’s a dancer. Take her to a dance school.’
“I asked Gillian what happened. She said, ‘I can’t tell you how wonderful it was. We walked into this room, and it was full of people like me – people who couldn’t sit still, people who had to move to think. They did ballet, they did tap, jazz and modern day contemporary.’
“Gillian was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet School. She became a soloist and had a wonderful career there. She eventually graduated from the Royal Ballet School, founded her own company – the Gillian Lynne Dance Company – and met Andrew Lloyd Webber.
“She’s been responsible for some of the successful musical theatre shows in history, given pleasure to millions and is a multimillionaire.
“Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.”
