Bruno Tonioli

Were you similar in any other ways?

Uh I wasn't really close to my dad because I hardly ever saw him. And the only thing we had in common, it was the love for dance. My father used to go out every Saturday night, all his life, Timmy my mother died ballroom dancing, every Saturday night. His pride was his elegance. And he g based himself on Fred Astaire. And we used to go, I still remember I was very, very little, they used seven or eight. There used to be cinemas in Italy at the time when they used to show old movies. You s for like fifty P you get a double bill of Fred Estelle, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly. So you had all afternoon, basically, for five hours in these little cinemas.

Tell me how you avoided it.

Oh, that's a long story. I knew there was a big festival in Positano, arts festival, with all these people from the theater and the movies. So I gotta be there. I don't know why, I just gotta go. The star turn of this festival was um a theater group called Le Grandeurgeme Beste in Paris. There was a huge international hit at the time. And as I go to meet this friend, the the guy that was playing one of the major roles in the show had a divas drop. And he walked out. And it just happened that I was almost the double. And the director looked at me, he's called Franz Salieri, and he said in French, um, Esque tu dance. Oh God. Yes. I've never done anything professional. I was well, you know, I mean, I just I was doing my own thing. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I fitted all the costumes. I fitted everything except the shoes that were too small. And they taught me a number every day. So I've opened in Milan. September 1974, it was a huge hit. Tour Italy went to Paris. And then we came with that show came to London. Now to go back to the question. The question, I was touring and I said at the time, you know, if you were gay, you were exempt from serving in the military. So but obviously everybody by nineteen seventy five, seventy six, everybody kinda was turning up in full makeup because they to g they would have done anything. To get out of that, I remember I had a wonderful fur coat at the time, but I was very demure. I said, just wear the fur coat, but I had all the clippings, you know, the press clippings of the show, and played it very, very meek, and just as I am, but just with this lovely fur coat, all my clippings. I went in, I had the appointment with the general, I can't remember, or the top guy. He actually was very, very nice. And he said, well, I do understand you're not actually pretending. A lot of people now do that to get out, and in fact, you know, it's just an act. And this would actually stop your career. And I do understand. It was very, very nice. But what happened, which I never told anybody, somebody got a whiff. And they called my parents' house. And I picked up the phone and said, Well, we're gonna tell your parents that you just got out because you say you're a queen. So we'll do. No, but just just say, well, do it, who cares?

When you went home during those periods... what was your relationship with home?

And when I actually felt very, very sad when I go back because, yeah, there is a sense of a world gone by. I am the same, but I'm not the same. You know, when you live in these provincial towns, time seems to stand still. People do the same things. They may be different generations, but they live by a certain not rules, but it is a cyclical thing that they keep repeating. And unless you fit into that kind of world, there's nothing for you to do. Going back is alw is a bit sad, especially because I've lost everyone. You know, it's isn't is there is nothing for me there anymore. You know, you you feel that and there's no point hanging on to it.