Mrs. Louise Jackson has always kept on her toes. She began dancing at the age of three.

Today she oversees a Jackson School of Performing Arts which boasts more than a thousand students.

While actively serving the community on Government boards and on charitable committees, she has maintained a livelihood from the school she founded more than forty years ago in 1953.

Women of all walks of life in Bermuda have been through the Jackson School.

Even today, her students range from grandmothers to three-year-olds.

Her school may have logged more hours on the stage at City Hall's auditorium than any other single organisation. It has six recitals every year and they usually are sold out.

Her influence in Bermuda's cultural sphere, through the performing arts, is so well recognised that many lose track of the business element. Awarded an MBE, she has been a force in the Island's performing arts.

Sitting in her City office in the Arcade Building on Burnaby Street last week, we asked her about that.

She said: "I'll never forget years ago a very distinguished lady called me and said that her organisation would have called me years ago to run for the Corporation of Hamilton.'' The caller's organisation wanted a Hamilton businesswoman in City Hall. But they never thought of Mrs. Jackson as a businesswoman. She was the teacher, nay, the guardian of the performing arts.

Many people have seen the school as a volunteer, community service. Sometimes it is. Students who have not been able to afford the required lessons, but who have shown real talent, are often accommodated.

But there are ten instructors who make their living out of teaching at the school. There are six dance teachers, three music tutors, a gymnastics instructor and a drama teacher.

Dance disciplines taught include ballet, pointe, modern dance, jazz and tap.

The music section is doing piano, percussions and woodwinds. There is no voice teacher at the moment. Classes are held throughout the day and early evening.

Jackson Holdings Ltd. also has a retail outlet below the school on the street level for leotards and other danceware, together with some fashions. The idea came from son-in-law Mr. Tucker Hall, married to daughter Deborah. Her second daughter, Susan, is married to Mr. Monty Nearon.

The retail store is called Jazz, although it is soon to be called the Jackson Dance Shop.

"The thing about this business is that it is totally family owned. That was the first success. If anything ever happened to me, my daughters could take it over, because they have worked within the organisation.'' Her husband, Senate President the Hon. Albert Jackson, is the president of the company. He also was the master of ceremonies hours after our interview on Friday for the prizegiving night at City Hall.

Bermuda's elite were well represented at the event, including the Governor and the Cayman Islands Governor. More than $18,000 worth of scholarships were given out to students for use at the school. This includes five scholarship students who will be allowed to participate in any classes they like.

Mrs. Jackson, a Bermudian, is far removed from those days back in the 1950s, when she first opened the school.

Back then she was a wide-eyed American college student who graduated at the top of her physical education class at Howard University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Health and Physical Education in 1952.

Born in Philadelphia's city centre, her mother was a teacher until the children (including an elder brother and younger sister) came along. Having grown up in the 1930s and the 1940s, it is amazing how hard the black family pushed to get their children an academic, as well as a cultural education.

Her father worked three jobs. The parents were already in love with the arts.

Her mother was an accomplished pianist.

She credits her parents with being ahead of their time. They made sure their children had all the lessons. Piano, ice skating, gymnastics, horseback riding, swimming. Mrs. Jackson excelled at ice skating and gymnastics (third in the City finals). Their swimming lessons were complete to the instructor's level.

The children, it was decided, would not fall into the stereotype of urban black children. It was important to have them exposed to more.

They were sent to the best schools, and forced to learn the work ethic early.

Mrs. Jackson was recommended for, and eventually invited to, the prestigious Philadelphia High School for Girls.

Before college, she was dancing professionally with two opera companies. But upon graduation from Howard, the head of the physical education department told her of a position open at the Berkeley Institute in Bermuda, teaching a new course in physical education.

In 1952, she came here for one year, to find no physical education programme at all at the Berkeley. No gym. Nothing.

She introduced fencing, gymnastics, archery and dance. She started the May festival, an annual dance event. After five years, during which she married, she left to have her first child.

Her husband, she said, has always been her rock.

"I don't know what I would have done without him,'' she said. "The entire Jackson family are such incredible people. He is so clear in his reasoning, and so even-tempered.

"I was lucky to have met Albert. I met him when I first arrived in Bermuda.

He had just returned to teach at Francis Patton School. I was boarding with his brother and sister-in-law. He was living next door.

"But if I think of more than 40 years of marriage, the success of it is because of him. I've never met anyone like him. I think if he has been upset twice, that is it, in 40 years of marriage. He's the epitome of reason.'' Their marriage is the subject of a detailed feature article in the 1995 edition of the Bermuda Bridal Guide magazine.

She started her dance school the year after she arrived, soon after meeting Albert. Its first location was a lounge at the new Sunset Lodge Hotel on North Shore in Pembroke. It later moved to the Imperial Hotel in Hamilton, before going to Trinity Hall, and eventually the Arcade building.

Even during periods she was in England, to be with her husband in the 1960s while he was studying, the school was still being operated by Ms Beverly Brock and Mrs. Anne Hines.

She started the school having had calls from a number of prominent black people in the Island, pushing her to share her talent. They included Lady Madree Richards, the wife of a Sir Edward Richards, the lawyer who later became Government Leader.

The concern, back in the early 1950s, was that black children had little in the way of cultural exposure to the performing arts. But although that was the root cause of the beginning, the school always welcomed children of all races.

It never was a secret that integration in the Jackson School long predated integration in the community. In fact, it was the quality of the school's programmes that made it attractive to all parents who sought the best instruction for their children.

Mrs. Jackson is also an author, having written "Gombey Boy'' and "Bermuda Gombey''.

Jackson introduced tupperware The latter is soon to be updated for another printing.

She pioneered the introduction of Tupperware in Bermuda, and remains the company's Bermuda distributor. She said during the heyday of sales, many of her sales agents used their earnings to fund schooling, houses and businesses.

She said: "A lot of people did well off of sales. At one point the sales were tremendous. It was a huge wage earner for some people. There were some dealers making a lot of money. I was just talking to a teacher who told me she made about $7,000 a week for one period.'' Mrs. Jackson also was involved in selling perfume and jewellery through house parties.

Today, at 64, she still marvels at Bermuda's physical beauty and the beauty of its people. She recalled her surprise, upon arriving from the US to find people with manners and charm that she said was unparalleled with anyone she had ever met.

She does have one concern though. There is something that she feels is out of character.

She said: "The thing that distresses me at the moment, is the bickering and the tearing at one another, for whatever reasons. It is not the Bermuda I can remember. There's a lot of petty squabbling and personal attacks.

"We need to stop and take note of what we have. There are people scrambling to get here to live. There are others who come here and can't believe what's been achieved in this society.

"We want the very best in everything, and that's only right. Yet here we are knocking ourselves down. That saddens me. The personal attacks really bother me.'' Controversy, or imbalance, is not what a performer seeks. But Mrs. Jackson has had to deal with her share. For many years she has been one of the Telecommunications Commissioners and chairman of the Broadcast Commissioners.

She is also the long time chairman of the Library Committee, is a trustee and vice chairman of the Bermuda National Gallery, and is co-founder and executive board member of the National Dance Theatre of Bermuda. She's on the programme committee of the Bermuda Festival. She also serves on the charitable Committee of Six and the Kardias Club.

She talks about cutting back some of her activities.

Apart from her three grandchildren ("They are the joy of my life. Natasha, Scott and Samantha''), reading and travel, she still finds time ("quite regularly'') to join former Mayor of Hamilton Mr. Cecil Dismont for deep sea fishing!