Come Dancing....

I am a big fan of the Kinks, but that was my least favourite song of theirs before going to see Ray Davies live last year (he was magic), and hearing him tell the story about writing it as a result of watching his sister going out dancing when he was growing up. It struck me then, that somewhere along the line with the advent of pop music and culture, we lost something with regards to dancing.

When I was eighteen my parents had their silver wedding anniversary. After a sit down dinner, my parents and their peers took to the floor to do a waltz. I remember watching my dad gliding my mum around the room in awe. I had had no idea they could do that, and was dead envious. But when I was growing up Come Dancing was a programme that was laughed out of touch. If you'd expressed an interest in learning how to do it, people would have thought you were bonkers.

So hats off to Strictly Come Dancing for reviving interest in ballroom dancing, and providing such brilliant research material too boot. Since I've been writing Strictly Love, I've watched dozens of the dances on You Tube to get a flavour of how the pros do it, and help me set the scene of the book. This samba from Mark Ramprakash and Kara Tointon for Sports Relief is one of my favourites. I do hope Kara gets to be in the next series of SCD on the back of it...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPXtiVR82E4

As well as watching a lot of videos on You Tube, I also watched some online dancing classes, and had several seriously odd moments when I was listening to a Texan called Hank describing how to do Cuban Motion and trying it out in my not exactly huge study. I also got the chance to meet Izabela Hannah, who is a pro from one of the early SCD series who helped me out enormously.

I have just finished the second rewrites on Strictly Love, and hope I have succeeded in making the dancing scenes credible. I did reread Katie and Rob's rumba while listening to Body Heat (the correct version this time), and I think it works...

Though I am done with the book, I am definitely not done with dancing, and will still be blogging about it. I also hope that given my inability to get to any dance classes conveniently I can persuade my reluctant husband to practise with the dvds I bought, also for research. On the other hand, the attempt I made to follow it with the children were fairly disastrous. So maybe not...

So now I have to get on with book three, provisionally titled Last Christmas, which among other things features a shepherd. Hmm. And I though the research for Strictly Love was challenging...