Kristina Rihanoff and Robin Windsor are familiar faces from television’s Strictly Come Dancing. As Strictly professionals they’ve trained celebrities including John Sergeant and Lisa Riley, but now they’re taking the spotlight as principal dancers with the West End dance show spectacular Burn The Floor.

Although “we really rely on the Strictly fan base to come and see the show and spread the word, there is so much more to this show. It’s not just a mixture of ballroom and latin, it’s more of a celebration of dance in any form,” Rihanoff tells me. Windsor explains that “Burn The Floor was actually created way before Strictly was even invented, so it was a little bit ahead of its time… I was with the show for many years before I joined Strictly, so it’s great to come back and star in the show where it all began for me.”

In contrast, Rihanoff has always dreamed of performing on the West End and “was a fan of the show for a long time. I never thought it was going to happen, ever, especially when I was a little girl born in a not very big city in Russia, very far away from anything central. The dream came true finally and I am just really enjoying this moment.” Rihanoff insists that Burn The Floor “isn’t your normal ballroom show. It’s very on edge, it’s very now. So it’s sort of street dancing mixed with jazz mixed with ballet mixed with Latin dancing. People are very surprised.” The show basically follows “the evolution of dance; where it began and where it is now. If I had to describe Burn The Floor in one word it would be ‘energy’, because it’s literally two hours of non-stop dancing. It’s very, very intense but that’s what’s brilliant about the show; people are always on their feet in the end because our finale is so energetic and the dances are so fun that people just can’t sit in their seats. They come up and dance with us and it’s great to see them just so happy.”

“On Strictly we don’t have enough time to show what we can potentially do, because we’re spending a lot of time with our celebrities. Here, you’ve got pure dancing where Robin and I are in every single dance pretty much,” Rihanoff explains. “I have a few dances with Robin and my favourite dance that we have is probably our very beautiful, lyrical rumba,” says Rianoff, whereas Windsor loves “the jive, our finale is packed, and the jive is the dance very much like me; it’s bubbly and full of energy”. Burn The Floor is directed and choreographed by Jason Gilkison, a former world champion ballroom and latin dancer, and also a guest choreographer on Strictly amongst other shows. “Jason is a genius,” enthuses Windsor, “his entire dance life has been made for this show, he’s put a lot of himself into the show. He’s adapted ballroom dancing in a slightly contemporary way for Burn The Floor.”

Burn The Floor also brings together a cast of dance champions from all over the world, “there’s something very special that happens when all of us get on stage together,” Windsor tells me. Rihanoff agrees, “it’s very inspirational to have all of them onstage at the same time because you them going for it 100 percent and you want to do the same”. As well as this, “you’ve got a lot of live people in front of you every night in Burn The Floor which is just fantastic because you really get to feel the appreciation for everything that you’re doing,” says Windsor when explaining the difference between performing in Strictly and Burn The Floor.

Windsor appreciates what shows like Strictly have done for the image of ballroom and Latin dancing: “it’s made ballroom dancing current and cool so the public are now a bit more understanding. I used to tell people that I was a dancer and now I tell them I’m a ballroom dancer; I never used to say that because I was a little bit embarrassed.” But Windsor never experienced the stigmas surrounding men training in dance as he was growing up, “I used to go into school every Monday with an orange face after a competition, and actually everyone was interested in what I was doing and took care of me. I was one of very few lucky ones.” He recommends that any young aspiring dancers should value “commitment. Never give up. There are days when you feel like nothing’s happening, or it’s not going well, or I’m not going to do anything with this, but if you stick with it, and you’re determined and focused, you’ll always get your end result.”

Similarly, Rihanoff acknowledges “it’s been said many ways by different people,” but advises, “believe in yourself, because it helped me out. There was so much going against my career but I never gave up because my passion for dancing was bigger than my fear of failing.” And that’s what’s got them to where they are today, starring in “the most unique dance show there is in the world,” according to Windsor.

When I ask them why people should come see the show, they essentially give the same answer so there must be truth behind what they say. “There’s a passion with all the dancers in the show that’s infectious,” says Windsor, and Rihanoff affirms, “Burn The Floor is not just a dance show, it’s an experience. You leave feeling exhilarated to just go and dance.”

Burn the Floor plays in London’s West End at the Shaftesbury Theatre until 1 September before going on a world tour. For tickets and more information, visit www.burnthefloor.com.

Image credit: Beytan Erkman

A Chorus Line makes a triumphant return to the West End for the first time since it premiered in the UK in the late seventies, which ties in with research I have been carrying out as part of my postgraduate studies. Until now, I had failed to realise through all my previous studies into musical theatre just what a sensation this show really was, and how special its creation was compared with other shows.

Backstage musicals are nothing new, with shows such as Showboat, Kiss Me Kate, Phantom of the Opera, The Producers and 42nd Street popular and enduring. Also worth noting is how most singers enjoy belting out A Chorus Line anthem ‘What I Did For Love’, and who could forget the finale of lines of gold sequin-clad dancers toting top hats and high-kicking? But it is how A Chorus Line came into being that makes it unique. Director/choreographer Michael Bennett first gathered a group of dancers one night in 1974 and, with a reel-to-reel recorder, documented their lives and stories regarding dance.

These performers likened the various sessions to group therapy with Bennett consoling them as they shared the good and bad of their lives. Their stories were then appropriated into the book of the musical and punctuated with memorable songs. Some of the performers they found themselves acting out fictionalised versions of their own lives, a process they called “joyful pain”. For the first time, audiences were getting an unashamed telling of what goes into the making of a show and its chorus, and just how unforgiving and brutal the world in which these dancers were operating could be. Bennett furthered this connection between performer and audience through the set design, which included mirrors reflecting the audience so they could feel included in the journey.

Prior to this show, musicals were usually created by the book-writer and composer with influences by other members of the creative team. The primary source, if not an original story, was usually a literary text such as a novel or play which was adapted for the musical stage. A musical was not based on the chorus and definitely did not include their actual words, a fact fully appreciated by original cast members such as Baayork Lee (original Connie) who recently told critic Mark Shenton: “Michael Bennett gave me a voice. Until then, dancers didn’t speak or ask questions — we did what we were told.” Dance had started to gain more importance within musical theatre with Agnes De Mille’s work in Oklahoma! and Jereome Robbin’s choreography in West Side Story, but it was A Chorus Line that helped future shows such as Cats find an audience.

The songs in this musical are amazing and the show as a whole is still the best musicalisation of the struggles faced by actors, although anyone who has ever gone up for any kind of job can appreciate the sentiment of the line “God I hope I get it”. However it is the breaking of convention in its devising that sets this show apart and cements its place in musical theatre history.

Image: A Chorus Line at The London Palladium

You know you’re in for an interesting evening when you’re issued with an adapted bin bag on entry. And when you note that the floor has been changed into what looks a bit like a large paddling pool. All of this makes sense when you realise that water is the star of Flow, a collaborative dance production which explores both the nature of the element and our relationship with it. Set in the small, intense space at The Print Room in Notting Hill Gate, the work follows the journey of water through its different chemical states, structured by Peter Gregson’s expressive score which is divided into six movements. As anyone who has studied science at school will know, ice melts and becomes liquid water, and on further addition of heat becomes vapour, but Flow doesn’t really go with the curriculum. Under the choreography of Hubert Essakow, a dancer with the Royal Ballet for 10 years, the dancers respond to Gregson’s music, moving from a stunning opening with Thomasin Gülgeç trapped with a central muslin block of ice, to reflecting on how we use and depend on water, interspersed with projections of disturbing facts about deaths from waterborne diseases.

Vapour is the next to be explored, with the help of a huge waft of fake smoke which is visually very striking in the intimate space, followed by the powerful storm movement which, perhaps rather too obviously, is realised by the dancers combining into rolling wave formations, carrying across the stage the unified strength of tempestuous waters. The ending, though, is the bit those of us clutching our makeshift waterproof coverings have been waiting for with some trepidation, and it doesn’t disappoint. The dancers embrace the liquid water which now laps inside the paddling-pool stage, showering the audience perched around the edge in their enthusiasm, before melting down onto the floor until they lie still, mesmerisingly returned to the element which gives us life.

Essakow’s choreography is stunning and pairs well with Gregson’s score, but one area of the collaboration that’s a little weak is the realisation of the set design. The muslin ‘ice block’ is flimsy and unconvincing, and the text projected onto it is very difficult to read. In general, the narrative is easy to follow and clearly led by the score, but it’s muddled by having two central threads, the transitive nature of water or our relationship to it. As a whole performance Flow never really makes its intentions clear, but there’s no denying the obvious enjoyment both the dancers and audience get out of it.

Flow is at The Print Room until 23 February. For more information and to book tickets, visit The Print Room website.

Fiona Shaw performing The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: arguably, two national treasures sharing the stage at the Old Vic Tunnels. Having seen Shaw’s delicious performance of The Waste Land (if you haven’t seen it you can watch an excerpt here), I was prepared to be impressed. I wasn’t disappointed.

Under the direction of Phyllida Lloyd, Shaw half-recites, half-performs this 50 minute rendition of Coleridge’s 1798 poem. The Old Vic Tunnels proves an apt space: dark, eerie, and with the regular rumbles of overhead trains providing a liminal soundscape, the setting is an excellent compliment to Coleridge’s haunting verse. Shaw builds an anticipatory atmosphere in the pre-show, wandering around looking for a companion, an audience. She tries a pair of hats on a couple of ordinary punters before seemingly randomly selecting Daniel Hay-Gordon, the dancer who accompanies her verse with movement to tell the Mariner’s story. The atmosphere Shaw cultivates before she begins to speak is one of the finest parts of the piece. Replicating the Mariner’s compulsion to tell his story, seeking his audience (“The moment that his face I see / I know the man that must hear me”), Shaw draws out the essence of the poem: the need to narrate, to change, to tell.

Shaw’s performance, overall, is hard to fault. Her handling of the verse is sure, her lightness of touch is a delight. She makes use of the regular rhythm of the verse while maintaining a distinct freshness, as if she, and we, are coming upon the lines for the first time. She brings to life the raconteur, picking up and discarding characters and trading them with Hay-Gordon to elucidate the narrative. Her physical journey is also strong – the “throats unslaked and black lips baked” of the mariners appear before us in Shaw; the struggle and pain of the journey seems etched in her every limb.

Hay-Gordon is also excellent: compelling, and utterly physically commanding. Kim Branstrup’s choreography is largely very strong, simple, and deliciously unpretentious. Hay-Gordon’s albatross combines dance with physical shadow puppetry and is one of the standout moments of the piece. Similarly, he darts around the stage in a gravity-defying personation of the crew, dropping down one by one.

And yet there remains something unsatisfying about this work. My suspicion is that there was a certain tension missing in the piece due to its lack of relationships. Arguably, Rime of the Ancient Mariner is all about the relationship between the Mariner and his audience – the reading audience, aligned in the frame with the wedding guest. While there is a kind of relationship between Shaw and Hay-Gordon, it is in constant flux as they change and trade characters, and there is far greater focus on Shaw and the language than on Hay-Gordon’s physical storytelling, so he feels somewhat underused. The pre-show was so strong because of the intense connection between Shaw and the audience, and this went largely unmaintained in the body of the piece. There is one wonderful moment when the audience, illuminated by the red light of an outdoor heater, become the “crimson shadows” of the Mariner’s vision, but this connection is broken all too soon.

In many ways, this is a beautiful piece of theatre. Technically it is well judged, simple and sparse. Mel Mercier’s soundscape transports us from place to place, a particular highlight being the far-off sounds of the wedding guests somewhere in the depths of the tunnels. Jean Kalman’s light suggests locations without dictating, and shifts us, sharp yet dreamlike, between narrative and frame.

As a final image, we watch Hay-Gordon’s wedding guest trudge away, using the full depth of the space, into the Tunnels’ deserted bar. He seems to bear the full weight of the story while Shaw, as the Mariner, seems released, relieved, leaning against a wall, the agony that grips him gone for a time. However, this highlights what was, for me, the problem with the piece. While Hay-Gordon seems marked and changed by what he has heard, the audience did not, because of our lack of connection to the story, the lack of relationship between piece and audience. This is impressive, but did not move us as much is it might have.

The Rime of the Ancient Marnier runs at the Old Vic Tunnels, in association with the Young Vic, until 13 January. For more information and tickets, see the website.

Photography by Richard Hubert Smith.