TV Review
Movers & shakers
by Diana Wichtel
Star turns on the ballroom dancefloor make for strangely compulsive viewing.
A show that simultaneously resurrects variety television, ballroom dancing and Jason Gunn is either wholesome family programming or retro reality hell. Possibly both.
TV1’s slightly misleadingly named Dancing with the Stars is the latest interloper in what was once Sunday night’s quality drama slot. The show goes on almost as long as War and Peace and is a good deal scarier than most of those tepid thrillers that filled the space in recent years. Perhaps they thought we wouldn’t notice.
I blame the baby boomers for this fresh reality outrage. In our youth, ballroom dancing was the very acme of unhip. How we laughed at those couples doing their Stepford two-steps with numbers stuck to their backs, unnerving leers stuck to their faces and grooming not generally seen outside Crufts. Not that we could afford to. Ours was the generation that gave the world such priceless cultural treasures as “A Horse with No Name” and “I Am I Said”. Our own dance moves, from memory, required us to stub out imaginary cigarettes while flailing about with invisible maracas. So there’s a certain karmic justice to the fact that we who sneered so loudly at Come Dancing are now condemned to enter the 21st century watching a dangerously spangled Georgina Beyer trip the light fantastic to “You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman”.
“Tits, taffeta and teeth” is how one wag summarised the basic ballroom dancing aesthetic. “It’ll all start to make sense,” promised co-presenter Candy Lane unconvincingly at the start of the show. After an hour and a half, the appeal of the art form (or is it a sport? There have been moves afoot, as it were, to make ballroom dancing an Olympic event!) remained mysterious.
Never mind. The admirably ego-free Jason Gunn makes a good fist of a presenting job that, like Shane Cortese’s shirt, no one else could possibly get away with.
And it was all quite educational. We discovered that the inspiration for Elvis’s sartorial style in the Vegas years must have been ballroom dancers. We also learnt that on Planet Ballroom they have oddly romantic names. This series alone yielded a Candy Lane, a Kiel de Buisson, a Lauren de Boeck and, most wonderfully, a d’Artagnan Kennedy. Tim Shadbolt’s partner is called, simply, Rebecca Nicholson. This didn’t stop Tim Shadbolt from raving romantically, “She is the most intelligent and beautiful woman who has come into my life and given me the gift of dance!”
The judges included the very nice Paul Mercurio, still trailing clouds of glory from Australian 90s movie masterpiece Strictly Ballroom, and Good Morning’s scary advertorial queen Alison Leonard, taking a break from hawking insurance and funerals.
Still, the reality genre wouldn’t be the contemporary contagion it is if this sort of thing wasn’t strangely revealing. Theresa Healey transformed herself from slightly frumpy mother-of-two to the evening’s sizzling cha cha star. Those Catholic girls.
Tim Shadbolt and Norm Hewitt may both be built like the proverbial brick ablution block, yet they looked as though they were having … well, a ball. Hewitt tripped about beneath the glitter balls with surprising grace. “Mate!” cried Jason. “Talk about lifting the line-out!”
Shortland Street bad guy Shane Cortese had the exotic name and chest exposure of a born ballroom guy, but was strangely reserved. “Work on that hip action,” advised Alison. “I wish my doctor looked like that in a white shirt!” declared Candy in an encouraging, if alarming manner.
Westie Ewen Gilmourcha cha-ed with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man, knowing he would never, ever live this down. “The rhythm of the cha cha is fascinating and challenging,” Alison deadpanned. “You were challenged and I was definitely fascinated.” She’s shaping up to be the mean one.
The lithe and sporty Bernice Mene should have been a shoo-in, but she danced as if she was playing wing defence. Against the Australians. “Don’t be afraid to be connected with him lower down,” begged a judge.
Georgina Beyer’s partner became largely superfluous as she sang along, mugged at the camera and generally hammed it up. She did so well, enthused Jason, that “Helen wants to be in series two!” Now there’s a truly terrifying prospect.
As for Nicky Watson – “one of New Zealand’s most famous faces!” – the outfit she was almost wearing meant that it didn’t really matter how she danced.
That’s the beauty of this sort of thing. If they got Nicky Watson, a couple of soap stars and an ex-All Black on to compete at arc welding it would probably rate its socks off. What’s the point of having celebrities if you can’t endlessly recycle them? And there’s always the possibility of someone falling on their butt. At least this lot aren’t wearing bikinis, though considering the baroque excesses of some of the costumes, less would definitely be more.
There’s a certain comfort in knowing that this time we didn’t come up with the idea. The show is a version of the BBC’s wildly successful Strictly Come Dancing. In Australia, the franchise saw Pauline Hanson being beaten out by a Home and Away star.
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