Darcey Bussell
Ballerina and Strictly Come Dancing judge
It’s all about making mistakes. If you don’t make mistakes you’re never going to realise what you’re capable of. That’s what keeps the job exciting. Obviously you try to prevent it from happening on stage in live shows, but it happened virtually every day in the studio. When I was at school, teachers always said if you didn’t fall then you were playing it safe. I had a reputation for being very friendly with the floor. But I fall very well. I knew I was going down, so I’d go gracefully.
When Jonathan Cope and I were working on Kenneth MacMillan’s The Prince of the Pagodas I was very young. I remember always mixing moves up. There were so many pas de deux and we would confuse them and Johnny would go one way and I’d go the other and we’d both be on the floor. But Kenneth absolutely loved it if you fell. He didn’t want anything to look simple. When I first started working with him, Johnny said: “Please, Darcey, just make [it] look really difficult, because otherwise you are not going to get through this.” Kenneth really wanted to see the dancer struggle.
Vicki Igbokwe
Choreographer
Back when I was training at Middlesex University, one of my classmates made a piece. It was about lots of wacky abstract things and my role was a poo. A piece of poo that turned into a butterfly. I had this awful brown leotard, but after my transformation into a butterfly, my outfit was black leggings and an almost backless top with really thin straps. One of the male dancers had to lift me up and turn me upside down. So my head was to the floor, my feet were up in the sky, and as I was coming back down I heard a pop. I knew exactly what had happened. I grabbed my chest. One of my straps had popped and I had no bra on underneath. And I had a solo to dance before I could go off stage.
I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me. I wanted the technicians to go to blackout. But then that professional survival instinct kicked in: the performer face. The show was being assessed and in my head I thought: “I can’t let my friend down. Don’t show the absolute disgust, horror, panic in your face. You are now a butterfly.” I ended up having to do the solo with one arm clasped across my chest, trying to make it look like it was meant to be there.
Kevin Clifton
Four-time British Latin champion and Strictly professional
In my first series of Strictly Come Dancing I was trying as hard as I could to impress. I was dancing an Argentine tango with Susanna Reid to Smooth Criminal. Sometimes in a tango, two dancers will lean in towards each other, and my idea was that Susanna moves away and I’m still in the lean, doing the Michael Jackson thing, and everyone would be like: “Ah! How did you do that!?”
We contacted the musical Thriller Live to figure out how to do it. They came round to teach me – there are some special boots involved which have to clip into a board. I practised and practised. I must have done it a hundred times that week, it looked awesome. On the live show, I’m thinking, “Here it comes!”, and I moved over to the board, but I could not clip into this thing with my boot. Susanna leaned towards me, whispering, “What are we going to do? What are we going to do!” I said: “It’s too late!” So she moved away and I basically put my arms out and balanced on one leg. It was stupid. I went from hope to panic to despair and embarrassment. I was furious afterwards, throwing things, punching the wall. I still don’t know why it didn’t work …
Jonathan Goddard
Twice best male dancer at the National Dance awards
I’ve always had, even to this day, a tendency to blank on stage. I get really into what I’m doing and all of a sudden I wonder where I am. My first job out of school was with Scottish Dance Theatre. I was doing a duet with another guy on stage, and at one point I just looked at him and I had no idea what was coming next. The only thing I could think of was that I’d lie on the floor and at some point I’d see something I could recognise and get back into it again. But it was a duet, so I lay on the floor and the guy I was dancing with didn’t know what to do. He looked at me like: “What the hell?”
Then I realised it was probably quite a bad plan. Stage time always feels like hours. It was probably 30 seconds, a minute at most, but a minute is a long time to improvise around a prone dancer. The other dancers were watching from the side, laughing. These days I’m pretty good at covering it up. You’re fine as long as you keep moving.
Thomas Whitehead
Soloist, the Royal Ballet
In my early days in the company I was terrified of everyone, particularly someone like Sylvie Guillem. She was dancing Manon and there’s a scene in act two, in the brothel, where all the gentlemen pass her around. She was put on to my shoulder from behind. I was supposed to do two turns with her, then lower her down my chest into an arabesque, then step away. But when we did it, I couldn’t step away. When they put her on your shoulder, her dress goes over your head, so you’re looking through black lace. I couldn’t work out why I couldn’t get the black lace off my head. My face was in the small of her back. And then I realised that her knickers were actually attached to one of the buttons on my waistcoat.
When something like that happens everything goes into super slow motion, the music cuts out, you get white noise in your ears. In the end I just yanked it. I would like to say I ripped her knickers off, but I think it was just the button. I felt like I’d ruined the show. I’d known of boys being called down to Sylvie’s dressing room afterwards to have strips torn off them. But I wasn’t called down, so I think I got away with it.
Jonzi D
Choreographer and director
In 2007, I made TAG (a hip-hop theatre show about graffiti). I had a plan, but when we got into the studio I realised it wasn’t going to work. My work uses texts, but one of the cast members was uncomfortable with speaking. So I had to quickly think of another plan. I was clutching at straws, it was not the vision I’d had, and it was hard work getting to the performance.
I could have cancelled. I could have pissed off the theatre and the funders, but most of us understand the show must go on. We got some shit reviews, man. I remember the first time we performed, there were loads of artists from the (hip-hop) community there, who avoided me after the show. But I was approached by a guy called John Berkovitch, a graffiti writer, b-boy and poet. He said, “I respect what you’re doing. I’d love to help you with this.” And then he rapped a verse at me and that was it, he’d passed the audition. We got back in the studio and ended up with a new piece and we got a five-star review.
Adam Garcia
Musical theatre performer and Got to Dance judge
It’s both the horrible thing about theatre and the beauty of it: you can have a horrific moment where you want the stage to swallow you up. And then the next night it’s a completely new audience that have never seen the show before and you get to make amends. People have said to me: “Aren’t you the guy who fell over?” The last part of Tap Dogs is an encore on narrow steel girders. Lo and behold, I slipped and fell off the stage and landed on the front row. It was opening night, all the reviewers were in. I don’t know why, but I stood back up and curtsied. And it was reviewed: “He fell off and did a curtsey and then got up and did the number again, and it was great.” Yeah, you’re going to fall over every now and again. David Beckham missed a penalty in the World Cup and he’s doing all right.
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