October 2014!

Posted on October 7, 2014

The October 2014 issue of Dance Today is here! Our cover star and columnist, Strictly professional Natalie Lowe, leads our Strictly Come Dancing coverage, which includes an exclusive interview with Joanne Clifton. We have plenty of tips for dancers, including a new technique column and a report on cross-training for ballroom and Latin, plus interviews with young Blackpool champions, choreographer Susan Stroman and much more! This month is also your last chance to fill in our readers’ survey [link] for a chance to win fabulous prizes – the deadline’s October 27, so hurry!

Northern star Joanne Clifton

Strictly new girl Joanne Clifton tells Nicola Rayner that three of her four childhood dreams came true over the last year:

“‘To be world champion, to perform in theatre and to be on TV…those three dreams…have come true,’ she says happily. What was the fourth? ‘My fourth one I got rid of,’ she sighs, with what seems to be genuine regret, ‘because I always wanted to be a lorry driver. I designed my lorry and everything. It had a big mushroom on it, a blue one, and it said ‘Joanne’s Mushrooms’…”

Buy your print copy here or your digital copy from all good app stores.

Making history

Susan Stroman, the award-winning choreographer of the show The Scottsboro Boys, tells us about the challenges of making it in a male-dominated industry, and of evoking the 1930s in the show:

“It is musical theatre dance but it does evoke the time period – 1931 – in the American South, so we find steps like Snakehips and Cake Walks and then vaudeville/minstrel steps like grapevines and tap dancing. Tap was very popular at that time, so it absolutely evokes the time period and the style…”

Buy your print copy here or your digital copy from all good app stores.

Also in the October issue…

Technique clinic! Each month, we bring you a simple “cure” for common ailments in your dancing, with dance doctor Phil Meacham of the Chlemsford Dance Centre

Blackpool under-21 champions! Michael Foskett and Nika Vlasenko and Korina Travis and Richard Lifshitz tell Rachelle Stretch about training, sacrifices and triumphs

Cross-training for dancers – ten-dance champion Morgan Hemphill and elite trainer Amanda Harker explain what gym work, yoga and other exercise can bring to the dance floor

The mighty Wurlitzer rises… Alison Gallgher-Hughes meets Blackpool Tower Ballroom’s chief organist, Phil Kelsall

Strictly pro Natalie Lowe tells us about her new partner, Tim Wonnacott, and the excitement of Strictly pro dances in her regular column

Steps to a story… Novelist Cherry Radford discusses dance fiction

Plus reports from the NATD Medallist Competition Day and the English Riviera Festival, Jack Reaveley’s advice from the golden age of ballroom, sequence scripts, variations, news, reviews, our in-depth listings pages and more!

Buy now

The October issue is in shops now, or you can buy your print copy here or your digital copy from all good app stores.

Zoe Anderson

Zoë was born in Edinburgh, and saw her first dance performances at the Festival there. She is the dance critic of The Independent, and has also written for The Independent on Sunday, The Scotsman and Dancing Times. In 2002, she received her doctorate from the University of York for a thesis on “Nationhood and epic romance: Ariosto, Sidney, Spenser”. She is the author of The Royal Ballet: 75 Years and The Ballet Lover’s Companion.