From archetypal English ballerina to Strictly Come Dancing, Darcey Bussell looks back and explains how she’s found inspiration in teaching the over-fifties to dance.
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Darcey Bussell can tell if someone is a good dancer or not in three seconds flat. Which is pretty intimidating when she’s standing in front of you, all 5ft 7in of her, with that microscopic waist and legs up to her armpits, staring you up and down. “You can usually tell how somebody walks – you see how supple their body is,” muses the former ballerina. “I can see if somebody has got tight hips. I judge a lot of young people and you can tell straight away whether they have ability.”
What if somebody has no rhythm whatsoever, I ask, sidling away from her gaze; could you, ahem, tell just by looking at them? “But everybody can dance!” she retorts. “Even my husband can dance, and he has no rhythm. He learnt to do Ceroc, which is French rock and roll, and once he got the steps in his head, it was a revelation. It’s only your inhibitions that hold you back.”
I’m in the wrong place to argue with her. In the committee room of the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD), tucked away in a leafy square in south London, we are surrounded by the sounds of tinkling piano music and shuffling ballet slippers. There is the occasional thud on the ceiling from a pirouette; a “one-and-two-and-one-and-two” echoing from a rehearsal room; dancers of all ages scurrying here and there, to jazz or tap or morning barre... Keep reading on The Telegraph