Читать книгу Best Day of My Life: True stories to inspire, move and entertain - Told by a cross-section of the UK's celebrities and courageous everyday people - Giles Vickers Jones - Страница 21

Dancer

My dance partner Camilla Dallerup and I had been dancing for most of our lives. We teamed up as amateurs in 1996 and turned professional in January 2000. As a dancer you can define your success, firstly, on the results you get as a competitor (which we were doing OK with), but, more importantly, the invitations you receive to certain events around the world.

Not long after turning professional, while climbing steadily up through the ranks, our defining moment would come with an invitation to dance at a major event in Tokyo, Japan. We were young and in love and this trip could potentially make or break our career and ultimately our dance lives. This would be the chance to prove our worth and potentially set up our business for years to come. To put it into perspective, being invited to Japan as a ballroom dancer was not only a huge honour, but also a real sign of acceptance in the dance world. Big organisers in Japan only tended to invite the top-six ballroom and Latin couples to demonstrate at their events and Camilla and I were only just squeezing into the top-12 couples at the time. We had a lot to prove! Our fear didn’t end there. On arriving at the hotel, we were told the event was actually the Prince Mikasa Awards. Along with the organiser, we were greeted by five of the top-six professional ballroom and Latin dance partnerships, here to demonstrate at the same event. Not only did we have to prove our worth to the organiser and in front of HRH Prince Mikasa, but we also had to do so standing alongside pairs that had already proved themselves time and time again in this kind of situation. This was our chance!

After waking up in our hotel room, a combination of anticipation, a spring morning in Tokyo and a sense of this potentially being a sign of things to come, I decided to go for a walk and take it all in. The setting was a picturesque Japanese rock garden, typical of what you might expect to see in an old film. A pond filled by a 10-foot flowing waterfall, morning sunlight beaming through shoots of bamboo and the red leaves of Japanese maple trees, winding paths through a garden groomed to perfection and tranquillity enough to make any anxiety simply disappear. The memory of that morning will always be burned in my mind as the emotions were so high and the setting was unlike anything I had ever seen. The excitement of the day to come was building with every moment that passed, just being there was such an achievement yet the outcome could mean the difference between huge success and a long struggle ahead.

Being able to stay focused on this day was extremely important. I am not someone that particularly suffers with nerves; however, with what was at stake, I found my nerves becoming increasingly present and my confidence disappearing. It’s times like these that Camilla and I were at our best. Our strength lay in our passion for what we did, our fiery temperaments as well as our partnership and support for each other. Spending so much time together, we had an innate understanding between ourselves. We knew what each other needed at different times and felt like we could get through anything as long as we were there together. Well, we did just that and focused on the job ahead.

So time to get ready and head over to the magnificent ballroom for the first time. Walking in was one of the proudest moments I had ever felt. We were extremely excited if anxious, and we were greeted by our lovely hosts and the excited audience with such respect that we could be nothing but happy for being there. All couples were to do three dances each, one after the other over the scheduled hour, but the next petrifying news was really going to test us as professionals. We were to open the show with our Samba. Having danced all our lives, this should not have been a problem but that extra pressure was proving too much. My legs started physically shaking, as the evening opened and I stepped up to the floor as our names were announced.

The ballroom was the biggest I had ever danced in and the spotlights were extremely harsh and shining right into our eyes. It was hard to get our bearings within the room but we could just make out the audience anticipating our performance. The opening choreography was a series of reverse Samba rolls to get to our position before the music started. You could hear a pin drop as we commenced our dance and no doubt the knocking of my knees. Samba is a dance that requires a great deal of control of the legs and feet as you flex into your knees … and mine had none. Panic was setting in! However, as we hit our centre position and the music started, the crowd erupted and my nerves began to settle. The audience were fantastic and we were feeding off of their energy. As we finished our dance, one small problem was not knowing where we finished within the room due to the bright spotlights and trying but not being able to find an exit. So, I decided to walk us straight through a small gap in the front row which unfortunately was exactly that … a small gap in the front row. After our struggle to remove ourselves from the floor through the audience, our organiser greeted us, with a smile on his face and some extremely kind words: ‘Domo arigato [thank you very much], very, very good.’

The evening was a huge success and the beginning of a great friendship between him and us that would last our entire professional partnership together and until this day. Without a doubt, an incredible day.