Real lives: Agnes takes a bow after 40 years of dance tuition

Agnes Ness, who has been teaching dance to children and adults in the Capital for more than 40 years, is set to retire later this month.

Mrs Ness, 68, has been teaching courses in ballet, the concepts of choreography and festival dance acts at Edinburgh University since 1991.

The mother-of-two, who lives in Newington, will officially retire from the university on 21 May.

Mrs Ness was born and grew up in Leith and became a member of the Jean Carnie School of Dance at the age of six. She performed in dance shows across the Capital up until the age of 19.

"I just got hooked, it became my life," she said. "I went every day after school and got home at 9pm. I started with tap and then quickly took up Highland and ballet, and I did contemporary as well."

After leaving Trinity Academy at the age of 16, Mrs Ness worked in the life claims department of the Caledonian Insurance Company on George Street for around five years.

She met her first husband-to-be Robert Menzies Ness at a youth group in Edinburgh and the couple married at Edinburgh's St Christopher's Church when she was 19.

Mrs Ness went on to work as an assistant at the Gateway Theatre Company in Elm Row for around five years.

She said: "It was a very exciting time because it was a small company so you never knew what you were going to have to do next. Sometimes I would go on stage and teach dance to the actors."

The couple moved to Hyndland in Glasgow in 1965 and Mrs Ness's next role was at Jordanhill Campus, where she helped to make close-circuit television programmes to help educate Glasgow-based schoolteachers for around two years.

While living in Glasgow she was a member of Catharine Marks' Ballet School with which she danced in operas, including The Pearl Fishers and La Traviata, at the King's Theatre. She also taught children's ballet in the city.

Mrs Ness's first son Greig, was born in 1967 with second son David following in 1973, and Mrs Ness became a stay-at-home mum. She returned to Edinburgh's New Town around 1976 and started teaching dance history courses at the Theatre School of Dance and Drama on St Stephen Street in Stockbridge, where she also taught children's ballet.

Mr and Mrs Ness divorced after 20 years of marriage, and Mrs Ness remarried Laurance Black, 61, at a registry office in Leith in 2000.

Commenting on her retirement, she said: "I will miss the contact with the people who come to the classes."

Mrs Ness, who also taught French and history of art – as well as doing gallery tours – for Edinburgh Council at community education centres for 20 years, added: "Over the years we have built up quite an audience for dance."