email from Inka to Julian Wormleighton – shared here with Inka’s permission:
Dear Julian,
Thanks for keeping me informed. I often think of your mother Susan with gratitude. Thanks to her dance lessons, improvization and to the fact that Long Dene taught us a lot about the arts and music, I passed the 2 day entrance exam and was accepted to the then founded (1948) Czechoslovak State Folk Dance Ensemble and later to study choreography at Prague Dance Academy.
Thanks to this I also travelled to very many countries where we performed, including Africa, Japan, China, Vietnam, 4x USA, including 4 months in Las Vegas, Canada, most Middle East and European countries and, of course, England and the Royal Command performance, where Susan and I think Norman were in the audience. When our boys performed the Wallachian boys´ shepherd games (my ex-husband´s choreography), Prince Charles laughed so, that tears ran down his cheeks.
I thank you for keeping up the „tradition“ of Long Dene. It was a wonderful school with exceptionally understanding staff, except perhaps that Pat was a teacher we loved, because he told us jokes, but taught us less maths and I had a lot of catching up to do when I came back to Prague and went to the 7th.grade of „Gymnazium“ where the standard was much higher. I also had to learn Latin, physics, Russian and, of course, Czech grammar, history and literature quickly.
I know that my long years in good health were due to the healthy food and way of life at Long Dene. Jogging is now the „rage“. Remember the run before breakfast through the fields where cows were grazing? As the Romans were supposed to say, “Nihil nove sub sole”. I am now 90 (by the way, I received the award „Artis Bohemiae Amicis„ from the Czech Minister of Culture for my 90th birthday for promoting Czech culture), will be 91 soon. Not having kept up the healthy lifestyle but having started to smoke on the 12 day long train trip to China, where the Chinese gave us each a box of cigarettes every day, I am now battling lung cancer, although I stopped smoking many years ago. However, the biological treatment I am undergoing and consisting of 1 pill a day (supposedly very expensive but, luckily, covered by insurance), is keeping me „alive and kicking“.
I have had an interesting life and several professions. Dancer, choreographer, dance teacher, MC- introducing our performance in many countries where sometimes I had to learn the speech in the local language quickly (e.g. Somalia, when I learned that they did not speak Arabic like all the previous countries), translator (I translated a book of folk tales and a book describing our folk dances in detail into English), interpreter (besides elsewhere, I interpreted a speech in the US Congress and it was the only time I had „stagefright“), diplomat, I spent 6 years at the Czechoslovak and Czech (when the Czechs and Slovaks peacefully split at the end of 1992) embassy in Washington DC, and my last profession was personal secretary to the First Lady, President Havel´s second wife, at Prague Castle.
When I think of it, Long Dene prepared me well for all this. I learned French and English there and a lot about the Arts, literature and music. I had already learned German before I came to Long Dene at a childrens´ home I was in, where most of the staff were German refugees and German was spoken mostly there, and when I returned to Prague and went to the „Gymnazium“ (High school) to learn more about Czech history, literature, language etc., Russian was mandatory there. I also learned a bit of Spanish and when the dance group I was no longer a member of went on a tour of Mexico, I was asked to come along as an interpreter and MC to announce the show, which I did. So knowing 5 languages and some Spanish was very useful and probably one of the reasons I was accepted at the Foreign Ministry as a diplomat, although I was not young anymore.
So that is more or less the story of my life, very much influenced by Long Dene. If you wish to publish any of this or let ODs know any part, you are welcome to do so. I have no experience with ZOOM, but will ask my son Michael, who works for TV as a director, if he can advise me. if he knows anything about it.
Keep away from the modern Plague, Covid 19.
Regards, Inka Vostrezova , neé Vainstein
The Long Dene Community 