Welcome to Dance Today

Welcome to our new-look website! At our grand old age – we are 100 this month – we thought it was an apt time for a bit of a nip and tuck, so as well as redesigning the magazine, we have updated our web look too. We are just in time for “Strictly Come Dancing” season, so stay up to the minute here with Marianka Swain’s new blog, Strictly speaking, complete with our sequin-o-meter rating the dances!

For more “Strictly” news, see our October issue (out on October 6) where Marianka meets new professionals Artem Chigvintsev and Jared Murillo. Elsewhere in the issue, we have some lovely, nostalgic features by Mary Clarke on Dance Today’s history and Zoë Anderson (How the Charleston changed the world). We hope you enjoy browsing through the website and magazine and, as we celebrate our centenary, we would like to thank our contributors, our advertisers and you, our readers, who have made reaching our 100th birthday possible. Here’s to the next century.

We meet this month, through Jack Reavely’s eyes and ears, the great Len Scrivener and his partner Nellie Duggan (page 46). What a treat! We also look back, through the eyes of our experts Michael Reilly and Martin Cutler, at the British National Dance Championships, which made for a happy occasion for our cover stars Warren and Kristi Boyce, who triumphed once again in the Professional Ballroom with their son, Glenn-Richard, and his partner, Lydia Hedges, taking both Juvenile events. Kevin Berry reflects on 60 years of Singin’ in the Rain on page 34, while Marianka Swain highlights some dance dates in 2012 on page 22. I particularly enjoyed Rachelle Stretch’s interview with new Latin Professionals Jurij and Jagoda Batagelj on page 38, perhaps because I celebrated a personal partnership of my own in December when I married my fiancé, Jason Draper. We sealed the deal with a tango, of course.
I hope your new year is as happy as ours!

Nicola Rayner, Editor