ESTHER Hamer has been dancing since she was the age of four. The old, dreary death announcement songs on television would not be spared her attention, and she can still remember the times she’d shoot out of the room and start dancing to them.

‘Alright, you want to dance! As soon as you’re of age, you will go to dance school’ is what her mom, Patricia, would say to her. And so said, so done. When Esther was just four years old, she was signed up for classes at the National School of Dance.

Esther gives all of the credit to her mom who thought that it was a good idea to have her children engage in some form of the arts. Her dad, Terrence, was a self-trained artist who taught her how to draw and paint.

After signing up, she was placed in a ballet class, while her sister was placed in gymnastics. “I had a blessed opportunity to be trained by the Cubans because, at the time, Guyana had an exchange programme at the National School of Dance.”

Thanks to such early support and nurturing of her skills, Esther, now 42, is the co-director of Kreative Arts, a dance school that she runs with her husband, Jonathan, teaching not only dance, but music and drama as well.

Esther and Jonathan, and their four children – Ezekiel, Emmanuel, Justine and Jasmine – are all into dancing and acting, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Esther, who works on the Radio Serial and Street Theatre Section of Merundoi, remembers her childhood days of choreographing with her sister and cousins.

“We had a yard full of children, so that was one of our activities; to perform for our little yard community. This was in Kitty where I grew up,” she shared in an interview with Buzz.

Esther, who dabbles in spoken word poetry and is also a first aid instructor, had to reduce the amount of time she would spend dancing because of a serious minibus accident that left her with injuries. Now she does more teaching than dancing.

At her dance school, she tells her students, who range from age three to 55, that they should make good use of their favourable circumstances to dance. “I used to be very adventurous and try a lot of stuff; new things. I try to push and encourage people because you never know what life holds for you. Sometimes you can be playing with your ability, your gift, your skills because you think I have all the time,” she reflected.

Whenever she is dancing now, she does it most times with her husband who understands her injury and knows how to support her.

Esther, an award-winning actress, represented Guyana at the 2013 Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA) in Suriname as well as other international locations.