Interview: Former Strictly pro IAN WAITE on new LEGENDS OF THE DANCEFLOOR tour
Credit: TCB Group
The Strictly Come Dancing final is fast approaching, so what better time to chat with Strictly royalty? Dancer and choreographer Ian Waite, who recently toured the country with fellow Strictly dancers Brendan Cole, James Jordan, Pasha Kovalev and Vincent Simone, spoke to us on behalf of Zingo Bingo about his experience with the Legends of the Dancefloor, and his plans for next year's tour The Legends in Vegas: After Hours.
What first inspired you to become a dancer?
Well, I always watched those Golden Age Hollywood movies with my grandmother on a Saturday afternoon, and there was a lot of musicals with the big set pieces; things like Singin’ in the Rain with Gene Kelly and, loads of films with Fred Astaire, those lovely old movies.
Those films sparked my first interest in dance. They would have been the first thing that I would have seen related to dance. But it wasn't till years later I realised, maybe that was the connection because I loved them so much. My favourite was Gene Kelly. I liked Fred Astaire, but, for me, Gene Kelly was more charismatic. Fred Astaire was quite classic and formal which was very different than Gene Kelly.
But to be honest, I would never have danced, if it wasn't for my parents divorcing when I was 10. It’s a great story, my father was told there were lots of single women at the local dance school! So he thought, I'll go along. He loved it so much, he was going three or four times a week. And then he said to me, I want you to go with your brother. I was 10 and my brother was 5. I was like “Dad, no, I'm playing rugby and football. I'm in the school teams. I don't want to go to dance class because my friends will take the mickey out of me.” So, I just took my brother along to begin with, and I was there looking after him and watching. I took him for about three or four weeks and then one day they just got me up for a dance and the rest is history.
I loved it so much. I was really lucky because my dance teacher, Mary Richardson, was a former top dancer, a former south of England champion. She was one of the top dancers of her time. She took me under her wing and she used to take me to London to all the top coaches in the world at the age of 14. So, I had that exposure to top, top training so young…And then I was European champion by the time I was 18.
I think because of that training, I'd had that three or four years of training with the top coaches in the world, Shirley Ballas was in before me sometimes, it just snowballed from there.
My dance teacher then became my stepmother because my dad married her! Whoever told him about meeting women at the dance class was right!
That's quite a story. You've just finished the Return of the Legends Tour. What was your favourite part of the tour?
One of the best things about doing the tour is seeing our fans again, going on tour and seeing the love that they have for us still after 20 years. There’s that wonderful nostalgic thing of harking back to the good old days. It was 21 years ago since I started Strictly and 21 years since Brendan started as well. So, you know, it's a long time.
I just, look and I think, ‘I can't actually believe we're still doing it because I am the oldest’. The body's holding out – thank god!
What's the atmosphere like between the Legends when on tour?
Getting back with the boys is such a joy. I wasn't really sure how it was going to work because we've all done our own shows and there's quite a lot of big egos there. People like Brendan Cole, James Jordan, are they going to be able to share the stage without kind of wanting to take it over?
I think it was quite clear early on in the training that we were all going to get along brilliantly. We all choreographed our own solo numbers, and I’m sitting there watching the boys thinking to myself, ‘this is going to be unbelievable because you've got the best of the best dancing at their peak.’
It’s a show that allows us to do what we do better than anyone else. It really is quite something – we’re the legends of dance and we’ve still got it!
It was a bit of a shock to all of us that we were so on top of our game. Also, when you’ve got a bunch of world-class dancers together, the competition brings out the best in you as a performer. We drive each other on.
There’s definitely friendly competition between the boys. Who could be the best dancer? Who's going to have the best show dance?
Tell us about the new iteration of The Legends tour, Legends in Vegas: After Hours. What can audiences look forward to next year?
We are actually in the development stage of the production right now, just in the creative process of it.
There are obvious things that we're going to be doing. We're going to be doing Rat Pack, the classic Rat Pack songs. We'll also probably have an Elvis tribute in there. Vegas is a rich creative territory, so there will be plenty of us to lean into and look at.
We did suggest to our producers that we should go to Vegas for a little boys trip in April, obviously for research purposes (laughs)! I think that would be carnage, to be honest. It would be like The Hangover movies. Somebody would get a face tattoo and somebody would get married by Elvis, it would be fantastic.
But to be honest, with the actual creative process, we haven't nailed exactly what we’re doing yet. We’re working through it at the moment. There's still loads of time before we need to decide how the show will be structured, but it will be a great show!