Mabel Patricia Deane-Gray
[AMIS Memorial Chapel]
Mother Patricia was born in 1935 to George and Mabel Sherwood, her brother Sydney was 11-years-old. They lived initially at the mount the apartment block built by Mabel and still standing today on East Broadway. As we all know she was born to dance and perform.
Her earliest account of performing was appearing from behind curtains [at about 18 months old]. Dancing for her mother’s friends. By the age of four, she was attending ballet class and became a pupil of every dance teacher who visited the Island.
She was on stage at age 4 at the Colonial Opera House on Victoria Street, dancing the minuet with Florence Floyd and the Irish jig. She recalls many performances with Trixi Halliwell, who was known to some as Mrs. Stubbins. During the war years, at Dockyard, at Trinity Hall, Hamilton, and at The Catholic Hall with Anthony Ferraz accompanying them on piano. Diana Greene-Diel was her teacher for several years, and Connie Bainbridge was a mentor.
At Bermuda High School for Girls, she learned elocution, diction, acting and pantomime from, Eleanor Brass. Our family joke is that her voice projection was such she did not need a telephone!
Aged 9 to 13, she was the voice of Jane in the Z.B.M. radio evening production of ‘The Adventures of Jane and Tommy,’ a fictional story of a genie and the blue grotto mirroring the history of Bermuda.
On her 14th birthday, she met Donald Gray who was 16-years-old. The party was held in the Sherwood Mannor Hotel in fairylands, were she lived, as it was owned by her parents. Her cousin Stanley was dating Lidge [Donald’s sister] and they did not need his company. After this, Donald would wait outside the High School every day and escort her home. They spent many an evening on the dance floor at the hotel.
She also danced at events organised by the Bermuda Art Association [BAA], founded by Christine Diel. The BAA’s annual Arts Ball featured dance, it was during those performances that she met Bermudian dancer Ray Tanva, and he became her first partner, and lifelong friend.
She continued to dance at every opportunity, performing in ‘We Were Dancing’ at Kindley Field, and again in the same show on ZBM-TV, on stage behind the ‘Water Show’ at Langton pool, in outdoor productions of Shakespeare at the Botanical Gardens, in Jerry Wilmott’s Christmas Show, and at the annual fetes presented by the Lady Cubitt Compassionate Association. in the Bermudiana Gardens, Government House Gardens, Bloomfield Gardens, and many other places
Arthur Murray opened a dance studio in Bermuda in 1948 with teacher Lil McCrealis and, where as a teenager she was both pupil and teacher at the studio.
In 1950, she travelled to London where she studied with Master Nikolas Legat’s wife, Nadine Nikolaeva Legat, as well as with Valentin Provitch, Ana Roje and Oskar Harmos, at the Legat School of Ballet. She danced with the Legat Ballet Company for the 1951-52 season in England and continental Europe. At this time Donald and Lidge [now separated from Stanley] had an apartment in little Chester St, where she was a frequent visitor, between studies.
