Best foot forward, just like George

Raising his arm, removing his boot then putting it back on again while in possession of the ball, kissing his fingers – these are a few of the balletic flourishes of George Best that have made their way into a new dance production, writes JANE COYLE

HE WAS worshipped for his pirouettes and side steps, for his dancing feet and twinkling toes. He was equally adept at bowling the odd maiden over. And he looked pretty good, too.

Put these images together, add a touch of professional fancy footwork and the result is Best, Maiden Voyage Dance Company's homage to one of the greatest exponents of the beautiful game.

It’s so blindingly obvious that George Best’s flamboyant style and balletic brilliance would adapt perfectly to a dance performance that it’s strange nobody thought of doing it before. Those dazzling glides past wide-eyed and legless defenders, lightning fast switches of pace and staccato changes of direction before floating the ball into the opposition’s net are as much a gift to a choreographer as tales of love affairs with swans and fantasies involving sugar-coated fairies.

“The reason it’s never been done before is probably because the time wasn’t right,” says choreographer Andy Howitt. “Maybe 10 years ago while he was still alive, it might have been a possibility. But out of respect for the family, it’s only now that a sufficient number of years have passed for us to be able to view and analyse what made him the man he was.”

The premiere is being produced with support from the George Best Foundation and the Irish Football Association, who, for all their collective devotion to the posthumous guest of honour, were initially scratching their heads trying to imagine exactly what Howitt had in mind.

“When I heard that Maiden Voyage was going to do a dance piece about George, my initial reaction was ‘how on Earth is it going to work?’” says Best’s sister, Barbara McNarry.

But then she goes along to a rehearsal and it all becomes clearer. “It totally works,” she says afterwards. “I am completely new to contemporary dance, and was very impressed and moved by what I saw. It is so special to me that George is still being remembered and has been the inspiration for this production.”

FIFE-BORN HOWITT is a self-confessed football addict and a lifelong supporter of Dundee United. He was an unlikely candidate for a career in dance until he encountered community dance pioneer and fellow Scotsman Royston Maldoom.

“I can pinpoint the moment when my life changed,” he recalls. “I see myself up to the age of 16 as this guy growing up in a little town called Newport-on-Tay, where not much happened. I wasn’t at all academic; I was sporty and into woodwork and stuff like that. I’d never done any dance in my life, and never anticipated it would be part of who I was or would be.

“Then I got roped into doing a youth club project with Royston and my perceptions changed. To be honest, I signed up to it because that was where all the pretty girls went. It wasn’t a brave decision to become a dancer. It just seemed natural. I enjoyed the physicality of dance, which seemed to be not so far removed from kicking a ball around in the street with my brother. I also enjoyed the performance element, the experience of watching and being watched. And I liked the practical, hands-on aspect of it.”

When Howitt announced to Maldoom that he had taken this life-changing decision, the latter told him to go away and do a formal training at a recognised establishment. He was accepted by the world-renowned Laban school for movement and dance in London, and spent four years there learning his craft.

He went on to dance with a number of prestigious companies, such as Transitions and Diversions, became dance director for Tag Theatre Company, and in 1999 was appointed by Scottish Youth Dance to run Y Dance, which operates right across Scotland and last year connected with 150,000 young people aged between three and 21.

Driven by his passion for football, he has carved out a quirky little niche by recreating famous – and infamous – goals and translating them into the language of dance. He performed on the BBC quiz show They Think It's All Over, and his interpretation of Archie Gemmill's memorable goal for Scotland in 1978 was recently featured in Off Kilter, a dance spectacular staged in Edinburgh. But one request was a goal too far. He was invited to recreate Paul Gascogne's winning goal for England against Scotland at Wembley in Euro 2000. His response? "There are some things that you just don't do."

Best spans 40 years in the mercurial life of Belfast’s adored son. As Howitt acknowledges, the parallels with another of the city’s flawed sporting heroes, Alex “Hurricane” Higgins, are uncanny. Both redefined their respective macho sports, injecting flair, grace, dynamism and sex appeal as well as an irresistible attraction to the self-destruct button, which eventually turned the dream into a grotesque nightmare. But he made a conscious decision to focus the piece mainly on the life of the beautiful George and, for the most part, to avoid the dark corners.

“In the 1978/88 period, we touch on the dark days. But this story is not about his alcoholism and the horrors that came with it. You can go and read the books and the newspapers and watch the films if you want to get into those areas of his life. It’s so easy to forget what a great player he was, so we start and end with his testimonial game. I wanted it to be about his glory days.”

THE PIECE WAS conceived by Howitt and Nicola Curry, artistic director of Maiden Voyage. The two go back a long way, to Maldoom's large-scale production of Carmina Buranafor Ulster Youth Dance in 1990, in which they both appeared. With such an iconic hero as its centrepiece, they seem on course to achieve their shared aim of making dance appealing and accessible to a wide mainstream audience.

Howitt admits that its creation has been a labour of love. He watched endless YouTube videos, read letters home from Best to his mother, studied and analysed hours and hours of television footage and newspaper cuttings.

Then he started working with the dancers. There are six of them in all, from Northern Ireland, England and Greece and, watching them in rehearsal, their shared engagement with the piece and one another is evident. Two men portray the younger and older George, while the four female dancers change personalities like chameleons in representing the many women who variously crossed his path. True Best aficionados will instantly recognise the victory celebrations and expressive gestures, which were so much a part of his on-pitch vocabulary.

“There are hundreds of football images in the piece,” says Howitt. “Not everyone will spot them, though.”

But even the uninitiated will recognise the raised arm salute with hand on heart, Best taking off his boot then putting it back on again while in possession of the ball, and kissing his fingers as a symbol of excellence. Seen in this context, the dance vocabulary in his game becomes very vivid.

Father-of-four Howitt, who regularly works with male and female prisoners, asylum seekers and young offenders, is unequivocal about the ways in which dance can help to challenge and break down prejudice. He is very much behind the current campaign to stamp out homophobia in football, and feels that this piece can make a significant contribution.

“This is absolutely what I am about,” he says. “You don’t need to put a label on it. It’s clear what we are doing. People can come to see a piece like this and feel safe and comfortable. A football team is an incredibly intimate closed shop of men. They’re like a pack of animals, yet there are so few gay sports icons.

“I am a very heterosexual male dancer, and that can really freak people out because if and when they come to dance, they do so armed with all kinds of preconceptions. Yet they will find me open, passionate, unafraid to be expressive. Someone once described my work as an oxymoron – sensitively violent.

“George was a man who was not afraid to show his emotions, his vulnerability, his feminine side – and that was what made him so attractive.

I thought long and hard about the title of the piece and, in the end, settled for Best. It goes beyond the name. It's about encouraging and enabling people to be the best they can be in whatever they do."

Bestis at the Tower Street campus of Belfast Metropolitan College from Feb 18 to 20, then tours to Armagh, Derry, Lisburn, Omagh and Downpatrick