Dance writer and novelist Nicola Rayner speaks to DIVA about the history of equality dance and why representation on Strictly matters
BY NICOLA RAYNER, IMAGES BY ROSWITHA CHESHER
In some ways, last yearās Strictly Come Dancing was a win for inclusivity. The showās first blind contestant, Chris McCausland, waltzed to victory in a heart-warming partnership with Dianne Buswell.
Yet the 2024 season of Strictly, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last year, was missing an important component: it was the first time the show featured no same-sex dance partnerships since 2020, when boxer Nicola Adams paired up with professional Kayta Jones.
Itās a shame, not least because the BBC juggernaut was late to introduce same-sex dancing, or equality dancing, as itās now known, to our screens ā a decade after Israelās Dancing With The Stars became the first version of the franchise to feature a same-sex dance partnership, in 2010.
Clearly, this kind of representation matters. āIt was probably back in 2006 that I tried to get same-sex dancing acknowledged on Strictly,ā says DJ and community activist Jacky Logan, who was awarded a British Empire Medal in 2020 for services to same-sex dancing.
Jacky wants to see equality dancing normalised and featured regularly in the Strictlyās pro dances, too. One partnership she remembers fondly was that of celebrity baker John Whaite and pro dancer Johannes Radebe in 2021. The pair made the final, and their rumba, in particular, felt like a major step forward ā watching two men performing such a sensual dance on primetime television was a landmark moment.
It made the cover of Dancing Times magazine, where I worked for many years. A huge supporter of the equality dance scene, Dancing Times ran a same-sex dance column called Stepping Out, which I first commissioned in 2010, a decade before the first partnership on Strictly. āI remember when Stepping Out first came out and how important that was,ā Jacky says. āIt helped equality dance to become more accepted.ā
There are still many parts of the world, she reminds me, where itās simply not safe for men to dance together in public.
Representation on the page, as well as the screen, matters, which why I also felt it was important to include equality dance in my upcoming novel, The Paris Dancer. As I detail in the novel, it has a long history, stretching back to the early days of the Argentine tango in the late 1800s, when men danced together in the streets or brothels of Buenos Aires.
In the UK, equality dance started, in an official capacity, in the late 1980s. āRalf Schiller was the first teacher to teach same-sex classes at the London Lesbian and Gay Centre in 1989,ā says Jacky, who attended those lessons. āThe next step was the formation of the Pink Dancers, a performing troupe, in 1992,ā she continues. āAs Pink Dancers, we travelled all over the world, demonstrating that two men or two women could dance together, or that a woman could lead a man, as well as the other way round.ā
In the mid-1990s, after two men dancing together were asked to leave the dancefloor in what was then Battersea Town Hall, the decision was made to create a safe space for LGBTQIA dancers. What followed was Jackyās Jukebox, a dance night at the Rivoli Ballroom, where Logan DJ-ed and everyone was welcome.
It ran for more than 25 years, and Jacky has since passed on the baton to Charles Chan, who hosts Charlesās Jukebox at Bishopsgate Institute ā a venue that also runs bi-monthly Queer Tango evenings. Itās also where youāll find one of the biggest equality dance competitions of the year, the Pink Jukebox Trophy, on 15 February. If you havenāt experienced equality dancing first-hand, itās a wonderful place to start.
The Paris Dancer by Nicola Rayner is published by Head of Zeus on 13 February. You can find out more here: bloomsbury.com/uk/paris-dancer-9781837931828/
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