South of the border

DANCER, DESIGNER: Back in Gisborne since the lockdown last year Sheryl May continues not only to design fashion but continues to pursue her love of dance. Picture supplied

Dance and fashion share the same language for fashion designer and salsa dancer/teacher Sheryl May who returned to Gisborne shortly before lockdown last year.

Back in her home town - and a long way from London where she works as a freelance fashion designer, Sheryl continues to design fashion but with more of a New Zealand touch. Her love of salsa, and her experience in teaching the Latin dance style, means she is also now coaching not one but five couples for the Dancing for Life Education (DFLE) fundraiser.

“If you want something done, ask a busy person,” she says.

“Usually I'd be going back and forward to the UK. I freelance when I get there but I'm mostly contracted to Burberry.”

Burberry is a London-based, luxury fashion house.

With regular walks on the beach, Sheryl's time back in Gisborne is an opportunity to recharge, rethink and get ready to go back overseas, she says.

“Here, you can quiet your mind in a way you can't abroad.

“I'm trying to do some different stuff. When I do fashion it always reflects my mood and state of mind.”

Having returned in March last year, this is the longest time she has been back in New Zealand since her years at university.

“Of all the places to be you might as well be in Gisborne,” she says.

“I'm in constant contact with friends in the UK. A couple of friends' parents have died because of Covid.”

Along with working in high-end fashion in London, where she has been based for several decades now, Sheryl also taught salsa for 10 years in the UK.

Every artist needs a side hustle, she says. At the same time, her love of salsa feeds into her fashion design.

“When I dance I'm really creative in my fashion world as well. Dance and fashion free up a bombardment of ideas,” she says.

“When you move you allow ideas movement and feeling to move around your body. That's how you feel something inside-out. Ask anyone who dances — it's like soul food.”

Now her DFLE dancers have learned the choreography and dance technique in her front room, Sheryl has hired St Andrew's Church hall one night a week for rehearsals. They need that space to move, she says.

Sheryl has been involved with similar fundraisers during previous visits to her home town.

In 2010, she and Fraser Brown performed in Dancing with the Stars - Gizzy Style. Then two years later Sheryl and dance partner Matt Scuse won a Dancing with the Stars event in Gisborne when they performed to the song Time of My Life from the movie Dirty Dancing, finishing with a version of the lift performed by Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey.

With a potter dad — Seymour May — and mum Helen, whose home-based business Individual Dressmaker offers made-to-measure dressmaking, remodelling and alterations, Sheryl and her sisters were brought up in a creative environment.

“We lived in Harper Road back then. Mum and Dad belonged to 10 Talents.”

Pottery, cane basket weaving, dying fabrics in the backyard and “hippie craft gatherings” were a regular feature at the family home.

Growing up in Gisborne, Sheryl attended Makauri School, Gisborne Intermediate and Lytton High.

“I loved school,” she says.

“It was a great social occasion.”

At 17, she was an exchange student at school in a small town just outside Madrid, Spain. That experience was life-changing, she says.

“They plucked a girl out of this small town in the mid-1980s and put her into another small town on the other side of the world where they'd just come out from under Franco.

“I lived with a family who were quite academic and ahead of their time.”

Thunderstruck by her first contact with flamenco dance and music — “it's so primal” — she joined a flamenco class.

On her return to New Zealand she took on a double major in Spanish and psychology at Auckland University then studied fashion at Wellington Polytechnic for two years.

Then in 1992, she landed a job in Spain at the New Zealand pavilion for The Universal Exposition of Seville, or Expo'92.

“That was my ticket overseas. I worked at the Expo for six months, lived in Seville then moved to Barcelona and lived there for six to eight months. I worked for a fashion prediction company in the mornings and taught English in the afternoons.”

By 1993 Sheryl had moved to London where she worked for New Zealand designers for five years. This is where she got her grounding in fashion. During that time she spent three months travelling around South America and in Colombia had her first encounter with salsa.

When she returned to London she trained for a year with Salsotecca Dance School to become an instructor.

“I partnered with the head honcho then taught salsa for 10 years. In the evenings I taught salsa for his school for up to five nights a week. There would be 100 people a night in those classes.”

Sheryl is also certified under specialist Latin American and ballroom dancing academy, RDA, as a salsa teacher, and has taught in Crete, Spain, Ireland, Slovenia and has performed for film and TV in the UK and Europe.

Meanwhile, the day job . . .

Sheryl describes her fashion design style as “boho lux”, a style in which the spirit of dance threads through.

“I design for the woman who is essentially free-spirited, independent and prepared to stand out in a crowd. There's always a Latin feel in my designs,” says Sheryl.

“As a designer you're plugged into music, popular culture, street art — you never stop seeing stuff.

“Fashion is not just a movement but a tribe you belong to. It might be minimal, avant garde, boho, sophisticated or classic.”

Sophisticated and classic featured in a design Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern fell in love with while at last year's beachfront charity fashion fundraiser for the St John emergency service Sheryl was involved with. That design was a stylish black cape Ardern has since worn for state occasions. The PM selected a few more Sheryl May designs while she was at it.

“She looked magnificent in the cape,” says Sheryl.

“It's a power garment, like a cloak of power. I feel proud the prime minister of New Zealand chooses to wear my clothes. There's a moment of personal pride and at the moment she is the most famous woman in the world.”

For her designs Sheryl begins with a general idea of a seasonal line and creates a range of print patterns by photoshopping and collaging imagery from a wide range of sources.

“From the beginning I have an essence of an idea for next season. I do that with the print. The print is what speaks and gives the flavour to the range.”

For an upcoming New Zealand-inspired line called South of the Border, Sheryl drew on imagery that includes postage stamps, native birds, maps and even bright snippets from a work by French Fauvist Raoul Dufy, and worked them “to make the prints harmonious and worldly”.

“I wanted New Zealand details in the fabric but I wanted to do it in such a way that wasn't souvenirey. For the photoshoot I used beautiful Gisborne girls who could model anywhere in the world. They have that international look. All of the models wore my sister Amanda's jewellery.”

Even while still working in the international world of design from her Gisborne villa, Sheryl is closely engaged with dance. Since the Covid-19 alert level restrictions have lifted she sees interest in salsa growing again in Gisborne and next month will start classes.

“Everyone has been so separate, people are getting into it again. You feel like you're on holiday when you hear salsa music. Salsa offers escapism. It's an unspoken language — it's magic.”

Everyone has a rhythm, she says. Everyone has a heartbeat. Everyone can dance.

“Dance gives you confidence in your body. That goes into all of your life.

“People who know me often don't even know I do fashion. I've always run the two hand in hand. One feeds off the other.”