Obituary: Jean Pearce, dance teacher

The former Spice Girl Melanie Brown took her first tentative steps to stardom at the dance school Mrs Pearce ran in Leeds for many years. When the Yorkshire Television studios were built on Kirkstall Road, her classes were a veritable conveyor belt of singers, dancers and assorted other performers for the children’s variety series, Junior Showtime, and Mrs Pearce served as its choreographer.

Shortly thereafter, she was approached by the film director Alan Parker to help him cast the juvenile leads in his celebrated gangster musical, Bugsy Malone.

Her 70-plus years in showbusiness began at just six, as a dancer and acrobat at the Central Hall in the Leeds suburb of New Wortley.

She recalled in 2015 that she was somewhat smitten by stage-fright.

“On my stage debut I couldn’t step on to the stage, much to my mother’s chagrin as she had sold most of the tickets for the concert,” she said.

“I was dressed in a ballet dress and was supposed to dance on my own but I just couldn’t. I came on right at the very end when they played the National Anthem.”

Surmising that her future did not lie in performing alone, she decided it would be more productive to teach others, and joined a concert party which visited church venues. Eventually, in 1945 she returned to the Central Hall to open her first dance class.

“I had quite a few pupils and I took basic piano lessons and found I could play for all my pupils. If they missed a few steps out I missed a few notes out which meant we always finished together – much to the pupils’ surprise,” she said.

She encouraged her youngsters to enter competitions, and a few appeared on the BBC talent competition Top Town, in which performers from two locations each week were judged by the likes of the music hall comic “Wee” Georgie Wood and the American singer, Elisabeth Welch.

It was during a concert at Leeds Town Hall that she was invited by the Yorkshire Television producer Jess Yates – at that time also the somewhat sanctimonious host of Stars on Sunday – to become involved with his new children’s show, Junior Showtime. It was a staple of ITV’s children’s output for six years and gave such performers as Mark Curry, Joe Longthorne, Rosemarie Ford, Bonnie Langford and Kathryn Apanowicz their first breaks. Many had learned their stagecraft at Mrs Pearce’s classes.

Melanie Brown said she doubted that she would have become a Spice Girl had it not been for Mrs Pearce.

“Jean was strict. You had to give 100 per cent focus to get the steps right and everything moved so fast. I was hooked. I kept up, got it right and she put me on the front row,” she said. “At seven I realised this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.”

When Junior Showtime ended, Mrs Pearce took on the extra role of dance examiner, travelling to Spain, Greece, Norway and Ireland. Even after her official retirement, she continued to teach dancing at Woodside Methodist Church Hall.

Earlier this year, she made a final appearance on Yorkshire TV, playing a virtual duet on Calendar from her nursing home with her son, the entertainer Billy Pearce.

A mother of three and grandmother of four, she is also survived by Peter, her husband of 40 years.