A guest on BBC’s beloved show The Repair Shop couldn’t contain her emotion after seeing a gorgeous restoration
The Repair Shop guest ‘breathless’ and breaks down as she honours late mum’s final wish(Image: PA)
Things took an emotional turn on The Repair Shop after a guest described feeling “breathless” watching her treasured pointe shoes be lovingly restored.
Julie Felix features among the newest participants on the latest run of the hugely popular programme, having entrusted the expert team with the ballet shoes she wore during her debut professional solo performance some 40 years ago.
The London-born dancer, who is of Caribbean heritage, paid tribute to her mother as her greatest source of encouragement, while also opening up about the considerable obstacles she faced throughout her career.
Felix recalled how she was compelled to cross the Atlantic to America in the 1970s after a London ballet company turned her away on account of her skin colour, informing her that “we can’t have a brown ballet dancer in the line-up of the swans”.
Ballerina Julie Felix (centre), with The Repair Shop experts Lucia Scalisi and Dean Westmoreland(Image: PA)
Speaking with the programme’s specialists, Lucia Scalisi and Dean Westmoreland, she revealed how she was subsequently offered a contract with the renowned all-Black ballet company Dance Theatre Of Harlem, based in New York, reports the Manchester Evening News.
Felix explained that seven years on, her ballet company graced the stage of the Royal Opera House in London, where she was handed her first ever solo role. It was there that she performed wearing her “tan-coloured” pointe shoes, which had been specially dyed to complement her skin tone.
She said: “These were the shoes that I wore when mum and dad came to see me perform on the stage of the Royal Opera House. And I said, ‘mum, you were right. I’ve made it, and I’m here’. Right here on this table, these symbolise all the work, effort, love and devotion from my mother.”
She was left in tears(Image: PA)
Upon seeing her lovingly restored ballet shoes, Felix was overcome with emotion: “I was winded, almost. I felt like somebody had just kicked me in the stomach. I was breathless for a few seconds. It was genuine tears, it really was. Even now when I’m talking about it, I’m getting a lump in my throat, any time I talk about my mum. I knew that these would be absolutely what she had wanted.”
The heartfelt significance of the shoes was further underlined as Felix recalled her mother’s wishes: “She asked me, ‘Julie, when you’re finished with these shoes, please can you get them fixed in such a way that I can put them on a display somewhere in the house as memory of my coming to see you perform at the Royal Opera House’.
“That really choked me up because I just put my heart on my chest the way I did when I stood on the stage when she was alive. I looked up at the seats in the Gods, and I just said, ‘mum, I’m here, I’ve done it’ and it took me back.”
