Mrs. Durling, as I called her – never Noni, which was her nickname, was born Nora Bond. I don’t know her exact birthdate, but I estimate it was around 1905. She was my mime teacher at the end of the 1970s and into the 1980s. Mrs Durling had been married twice, firstly to Mr. Gregorious-Brown, and then (when I knew her) to Robert Durling, a teacher. They were both retired when I knew them.
I don’t know all of Mrs. Durling’s history, but at some point she trained with Ginner-Mawer and also gained some professional dancing engagements. In addition to performing, she also taught dance and mime professionally. Early in her career, she teamed up with Pamela Hudson, at the Pamile School of Dance in the Woodhouse district of Leeds, in the English county of West Yorkshire.
I knew her as a mime teacher, but I think she was probably primarily teacher of dance, and she couldn’t resist teaching me some Classical Greek Dance alongside my mime (as the two do go so well together). Mrs. Durling shared, I think, that reverence of Greece, which Miss Mawer also felt.
While Mrs. Durling is unknown to the world, I do think that she made her own mark locally, through teaching, and also through organising and running hugely successful rag shows (university productions held in professional theatres, with hundreds of participants). While at the Pamile School, one of her outstanding students was Bernard Atha (also his sister, Sheila). Bernard was a talented ballet dancer, who went on to have a successful career including military service, the legal profession, and then as Lord Mayor of Leeds. I had the pleasure of interviewing him when he was in his nineties, and he remembered Mrs Durling (or Gregorious-Brown as she was then), very well. He described her as being a little on the unusual side, and she reminded me very much of myself!