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.

One of my favourite pieces in this month's issue is Chindu Sreedharan's The Final Push, which draws on interviews with a number of dancesport competitors about the experience of dancing a competition its the early rounds through to the final. Looking closely at what your body goes through, it will offer food for thought to dancers preparing for "the big one" this month: Blackpool Dance Festival. Marianka Swain has gathered Dance Today readers' top ten memories of the festival, while Rachelle Stretch investigates the history of the crowd-pleasing team match. We are also lucky enough to benefit from the expertise of Darren Bennett and Lilia Kopylova, who solve your problems in their first ever dance clinic for Dance Today. Finally, two quick reminders: our Dance Today Teacher of the Year competition closes on June 7, so if you haven't voted yet, there's still time to do so, and our subscription rates will also increase next month, so check out the current rates over here.
Nicola Rayner, Editor