Dancing fools (although these pros are anything but fools)

 Just a quick lil post this time as I haven't posted on this musicals blog for a while and wanted to get this out in time for the 'Strictly' movie special this weekend.

 Now that we're officially into 'Strictly' season, this is mainly a post about our trip to Perth to see the incredible double Strictly champ Oti Mabuse in her solo show in May. Oti's also appeared on 'The Greatest Dancer', 'The Masked Dancer' and 'Dancing on Ice' as a judge and, as this all suggests, she's a pretty phenomenal professional dancer herself as well as being a writer as she's published two books about learning to dance. Her 2022 solo tour (titled 'I am here'- which is the translation of Oti's name in the South African language Setswana) was so amazing and unsurprisingly included some wonderful dancers, some unreal costume changes, choreography and numbers. Oti's husband and fellow dancer, Marius, danced with her on the tour too and there were several personal, familial anecdotes throughout the show. In fact, there were also some numbers that gave a sense of the culture and history of South Africa, (which is where Oti's from) before she moved to Germany for a bit to pursue her dancing dreams with her sister, Motsi, and eventually came to the UK. 

Oti's not actually a professional dancer on 'Strictly' anymore sadly and she'll be missed but she's as iconic as ever and is def 'booked and busy' as they say.

As I said at the start, it's the movie week special on 'Strictly' this weekend. Ok, yes, it must be said though, that after more than a decade and a half of watching it, I (like many others, I'm sure) have heard some of the cliches one too many times and know how it goes every year. However, this doesn't really spoil my enjoyment of the show and the theme weeks definitely hold a special place in my heart. It's so much fun to find out the theme for each dance and to see them try to embody certain famous parts of the iconic characters, stories and music. Halloween and movie week are my fave themes because movies and Halloween are some of my absolute favourite things but it's also so cool when they get to dance at the pretty special and esteemed Blackpool tower as it's such a great venue and the history of ballroom dancing in the Blackpool tower makes it really feel like an ideal spot to host the show, even if for only one week a year. However, seeing as this is a musicals blog, I'd be remiss not to mention the musicals week of 'Strictly', which is well...pretty self-explanatory, really, it's like movie week but with songs from musicals and it's awesome and 'such fun'. (A 'Miranda' reference for a wee throwback there.)

Thanks for reading this shorter but still slightly rambly blog post. There were some musicals that I was meant to see this year but didn't in the end and there are some coming up next year, as well as some more shows with the 'Strictly' pros so might do a post about that at some point... 

Hope you all have a great weekend and a fun spooky season now that we're into October. <3