Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Choreographer best known as a judge on Strictly Come Dancing and for creating the controversial dance troupe Hot Gossip.
On the island
Eight records
it was the first number that I ever created for hot gossip.
New Philharmonia Chorus & New Philharmonia Orchestra
I saw Brendan Cole and Natasha Kaplinski do a pasadoble to Carmina Barana. He wrapped his hand and his arm around her and the passion you could feel it, you could feel it, you could breathe it in. And I suddenly thought, if this show is affecting me, my entire body, I was shaking this way, surely it will affect the viewers at home in this way. And I knew from that moment on, this show is going to be enormous, and I'm going to be part of it.
I watched her dance, The Dying Swan, and her arms, they just looked like they were made of liquid, and from that moment my my life, I knew that all I was going to do was dance.
Smoke Gets in Your EyesFavourite
my mother was the kind of mother that would sit on the end of the bed or the side of the bed and hold us and sing to us, particularly to my sister and I, who shared a bedroom. And this was the song that she sang, and I can hear her voice to this day.
I put the piece of music on. I said, Everybody, just start the exercises ... I'll just quickly take the phone call. She rang and she went ... What's that music playing? I said it's Pasha Bella Cannon. It's my favorite piece of music ... and she said, It's my favorite music too. You've got the job.
One of the things I was asked to do was to go to the south of France to do a video with Elton John. ... Sort of moment by moment, we were sort of running around, plotting what we're going to do. I was getting the dancers, rehearsing them, and then shoot it. It was all done of the moment, and probably one of the best times of my life.
in 1984 Starlight Express opened in London, the first musical ever to be on roller skates and it's still running somewhere in the world to this day, 24 years later. But the other thing I will always be grateful for is it opened a career in musical theatre for me.
whenever anything in my life has come to me which I'm afraid of. And I've always felt that my mother will be there to watch over me. And it's something I've always tried to instil in my children, that there'll be someone to watch over you.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:54Did you cause a lot of outrage in Middle England back then with Hot Gossip?
Well, hot gossip had been going three years before they broke on T V and it was a real struggle. I was constantly told, No, it's too sexy for T V ... I pulled the group together and we became London's cult dance group.
Presenter asks
3:11Do you agree with Mary Whitehouse that Hot Gossip was too raunchy for people?
Well, I didn't think so at the time, but it was very sexy, and a lot of men I know of a certain age formed their opinion of women based on what they saw on hot gossip.
Presenter asks
5:31Do you worry about the competitiveness of Strictly Come Dancing, and that they might replace you with someone younger?
When that happens, and I'm sure it will happen at some point, I've got so many other things in my life. Of course I'll miss it, I'll miss it desperately. You know, I can't imagine seeing somebody sitting in my chair, what I call, you know, my chair, my place, particularly because the four of us have such a good, strong relationship. So if one of us is pulled apart, it will be sad. But, you know, I've had so much in my life and I've got so much more I want to do, and life will go on.
The keepsakes
The book
Louisa May Alcott
the child in me that never grew up would want to take little women.
Presenter asks
11:04Were you aware that money was very tight when you were growing up, and did it make you self-conscious?
I was very aware very, very aware that money was um was tight. Yes. ... Just in the ways of my parents discussing, you know, where money was you know, was going to come from. ... Not being able to have, you know, the clothes or the shoes, you know, what you had was what you had. ... And that was that we couldn't go out shopping for a lot of things. I knew there wasn't money around.
Presenter asks
15:17How old were you when your mother became ill with leukemia?
I was fifteen, and from the moment I knew she was ill. To the point where she died was only three months. ... I was fifteen and very close to one of the nurses who had said they'd never seen anything like it. ... One will never know, but it was it just all happened so, so fast.
Presenter asks
18:06How did you decide that dance was your future?
I think there was no other future. I was going to dance, but I did go to London. ... I finished my classes at five o'clock, and as I was walking out I saw a sign saying Modern American Jazz, Molly Molloy, and I paid for the class, quickly joined in, and by the end of that class I knew I was never going home again. I had to learn this style of dance. ... I knew that if I went home even to pick up some fresh clothes, that would be it. I'd never have the courage to leave. So the only way I could do it was to stay.
“I was short, I wasn't limber, I wasn't anything that it takes physically to make a dancer. But I wanted to be a dancer, and I spent my life in dance classes on the back row. I was never one of the girls that got to the front of the class, but nothing was going to stop me.”
“My mother was the softest, the gentlest, the kindest. Even now, you know, we find it really hard to talk about. We're just left with emptiness.”
“I think I in some way I cling to my youth, not that I want to be young, but that I want to stay youthful inside. I don't want life, or life as it is, to stop, and I don't want to stop growing yet.”