The glory of dance

The world of show biz is alive and well.
 I don't usually tune in to "Strictly Come Dancing"  the format wore me down with too much manufactured hype and the inevitable screaming from the audience but tonight instead of switching off I thought I would see how the show was progressing. In essence it's about couples performing the standard dance steps. The quickstep, the waltz, the foxtrot, the samba, and the jive, all dances which people of my age growing up could perform to varying degrees of success. Our Saturday nights  in the 50s were often a trip into the Mecca Ballroom where the dance bands, even the greats like Joe Loss would captivate us with swing and fixed tempo music drawing us onto the dance floor as if we had been hypnotised into believing we were from stage and screen. It was the era of the Hollywood Musical with extravagant casts and extravagant stories to tell. The slick choreography and the perfect timing of the dancers was mystical to watch and in our own way, with a girl who could dance we tried to execute those moves which the professional dancers made. Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire were the epitome of the  suave, stepping it out couple gliding the stage with their grace and timing, and Gene Kelly the muscular song and dance performer with his ratter tat choreography much remembered for his routine, "Singing in the Rain".

Austerity and taste has seen the demise of the large stage cinema musicals such as Oklahoma and Severn Brides for Seven Brothers but the marvellous musicality of The Phantom of the Opera and Cats brought to the stage a kaleidoscope of music song and dance which will be remembered for a long time, especially those who were lucky enough to be around when the shows first opened.
Strictly Come Dancing has, in its way and on a small stage become part of the show biz phenomena. The format of a professional ballroom dancer teaching an amateur dancer to dance a quickstep or a waltz, all within a week with the added difficulty of a complex choreographed story line to perform in front of millions watching on the box has become one of the top attractions for Saturday night viewing. The beautiful long legged women and their lean athletic male partners swaying to the beat of a well known dance piece has become a top draw card and watching tonight one could see why. To near perfection the dance couples seem to pull it off.  Faultless steps are but only one part of the display, it's the outrageously difficult sequences that link the story line set to music which the dancers seem to bring to our screen week in and week out. These are not professional dancers with all the physicality that years of training can bring. One member of the duo, be it the man or the woman is not to all intents and purposes a dancer and one marvels at how on earth, in a week they can be so practised to make us all at home be in awe at their skill and deportment and make me at least, turn on the old tunes and cast aside the years to lose myself, as of then in the glory of dance.