Brian and Kristina, 2010 tour dates, and early Anton
Sunday, 30 August 2009
So it’s been a busy week for us at Strictly Dancers. Well, for me, anyway, because Nick’s away in America missing all the fun.
Apart from the Strictly series 7 line-up announcement, we’ve launched the second StrictlyDancers.com event, this time on 25 October with Brian Fortuna and Kristina Rihanoff. Tickets are selling fast, so get in while you can!
Speaking of tickets, dates for the 2010 “Strictly Come Dancing Live – The Professionals” (catchy name, innit?) tour are dribbling out in a frankly rather inauspicious manner. We also have the dates for Anton and Erin’s solo tour, and it looks like Darren and Lilia’s Latin Fever show will be hitting the road next year too. We’ll be adding all these dates to StrictlyDancers, as well as the dates for the normal celeb tour, in the near future. (You have no idea how tedious it is adding very repetitive event details to the site over and over and over again, so it may be a little while…)
And here’s a little treat from the archives of my legendary dance teacher Mark Shutlar.
This is from the late 80s. Mark and his wife Jayne are second from the right in the runner-up position (nice shiny shirt there) – but wait! Who’s that second from the left!
Here’s a close up.
Holy Moly, it’s Anton! In Latin get-up!
Not changed much, has he?
Mark has tons of this historical stuff. He competed with a lot of the Strictly pros as an amateur and professional – Karen Hardy, Ian Waite, Matt Cutler and of course Anton “Tony” du Beke – and was a regular on the original Come Dancing, where Matt and Ian were usually his teammates.
I’ll wangle some more out of him, but in the meantime here’s a clip from Come Dancing circa 1989 with a few glimpses of Ian Waite in the background. The format’s certainly come a long way. (When Angela Rippon is the least scary of three women, you KNOW it’s the ballroom dance world of the ’80s).