BACK ON BEAT
Actors Olympia Valance and Bridie Carter are sashaying back for Dancing With The Stars: All Stars, writes Siobhan Duck
IT didn’t take too much convincing to get Bridie Carter and Olympia Valance to return to the glittering lights of the television dance floor. Thinking they’d had enough drama for a while, both actors put their careers on hold to enjoy the quiet life on their respective farms – Carter with her husband and two sons, and Valance with her fiancé, former Essendon AFL player Tom Bellchambers.
But when they were presented with the opportunity to frock up and strut their stuff beneath the mirror ball once more, they ditched their rural retreats in favour of joining eight other returnees for Dancing With the Stars: All Stars, which will also feature novice competitors Cameron Daddo, Deni Hines,
Sam Mac and Kris Smith.
“I was just excited to get out of the house,” Valance says with a laugh, referencing the impact that a few gruelling Melbourne lockdowns have had on her social life. “I hadn’t put a face on for two years. I hadn’t put a dress on for two years. So I was just excited about doing all those things again because it had been so long.”
But once she was in dance rehearsals, the Playing For Keeps star discovered that her muscle memory was quite good.
“It wasn’t like starting from the beginning,” Valance says.
“I remember how difficult it was when I first started because I had absolutely no idea how to do anything. But then doing it this second time was actually much easier. It was much less pressure and I was able to have a lot more fun without stressing.”
An added bonus for Valance in returning to the series was the inspiration it provided for her upcoming nuptials with Bellchambers; her professional onscreen dance partner, Gustavo Viglio, has offered to choreograph a number for their big day.
“I’m constantly showing Thomas videos of [routines],” she admits. “I mean, he’s quite big and Gustavo is quite small – well, anyone is small by comparison to Thomas – but he has the ability to do these incredible flips and tricks on the floor, and he’s up for it.”
Bellchambers agreed with Valance that the best thing to do was to have Viglio stay on their farm for further practice. “He’s just dying to do our wedding dance,” Valance says of Viglio.
“And of course, he will. And Thomas is all for it. He’s really excited. I want the wedding guests to think we are just doing some uncomplicated routine where we start out by just side-stepping before we surprise them by having it turn into some crazy routine where he’s throwing me in the air.”
While Valance competed in 2019 when DWTS was revived by Network 10, it’s been a lot longer between cha-cha-chas for Carter, who won season seven on the Seven Network 15 years ago. But like Valance, Carter says the moves she learnt the first time around came flooding back as soon as she got into the studio, even though she’d only done the odd Zumba class since claiming her trophy back in 2007.
Even so, as a perfectionist who threw everything she had at rehearsals again, the McLeod’s Daughters star reveals she could barely walk at the end of the day and her feet were bleeding so badly that she became “best friends with Band-Aids,” quipping, “I was older [this time around], too.”
Aside from age, “I had another baby since the last time,” Carter says. “Plus, I had done a whole season on my farm. A lot of [returning contestants] were like, ‘I have been sitting on the couch’ and I’m like, ‘What friggin’ couch? I’m on a farm!’ So my body was already tired because we have a firewood business and because of Covid, it was all-hands-on-deck to keep our community and our farm safe.”
Neither Carter nor Valance are big reality television watchers, but they admit they make an exception for Dancing With The Stars. “The dancing bit I love, but the world of reality TV? I am very uncomfortable,” says Carter, a NIDA-trained actor who has been working since the age of six. “My job is beautiful storytelling and aiming for the highest quality and a level of excellence, and delivering it to our beautiful people at home who love Australian television. That’s my world. The world of reality television for me is so different.”
Valance agrees. “I think it’s different when you are learning a new skill, like we do on Dancing,” she says. “It’s not bitchy. You’re not eating spiders or cheating on someone, or just talking s--t about people. That’s not who I am.”
DANCING WITH THE STARS: ALL STARS
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