MAGGIE, MUM AND ME: Sonia Kruger gets personal

A shared love of dance has led to a bouncing new addition for Sonia Kruger and her family, reports Tiffany Dunk.

Back in 1965 as the radio blared out her favourite tunes, a heavily pregnant Margaret Kruger would dance around her house in Queensland’s Toowoomba, her yet-to-make-an-appearance daughter Sonia kicking merrily along. Now, 54 years later, she’s no longer shimmying alone.

Joined by the popular TV presenter and her four-year-old daughter, Maggie, the trio joyously busts a move during a family photo shoot with

The Weekly. “I always said that my dancing around the house when I was pregnant with Sonia was why she became a dancer,” laughs Margaret, recalling Sonia’s turn as sequin-laden diva Tina Sparkle in

Baz Luhrmann’s 1992 classic Strictly Ballroom.

“Mum grew up in that generation where they went to dances, so she knew how to do a barn dance, a gypsy tap,” Sonia says fondly. “I remember her teaching me

when I was a little kid in the lounge room, and now I do the same with Maggie. It’s really fun – we have that shared love of music.”

Sonia took her first lesson when she was Maggie’s age, tagging along to a class with her older sister, Debbie. But it wasn’t until she took a ballroom class at the age of nine that her course in life was set.

“From the moment I heard Dancing Queen by ABBA and saw everyone doing a samba, I was hooked,” she laughs. Her love of “sparkly things” cemented the relationship and by 18 she had left Australia to go pro, dancing with the British championships.

Margaret remembers ferrying Sonia to endless local and national competitions as “time-consuming but enjoyable. I would sit there cheering her on, we all [siblings Debbie and Adam, and dad Adrian] loved watching her,” the proud mum recalls.

“My whole life was dancing,” Sonia admits. “When everybody else was having a normal adolescence, I was fully ensconced in that competitive world of ballroom dancing. Every night I was either at training, helping to bead a costume or competing. I wasn’t going out and I didn’t date boys.”

Instead, she says with a wink, she’s living out her wild years now she’s in her 50s. “Haven’t you seen the descent? She was once a good person!”

But Sonia’s youth wasn’t all glitter and sequins. There were also plenty of hair-raising adventures, growing up in regional Queensland.

“We were always outside as kids. You just had to be home by dark,” Sonia recalls. “We probably did things back then that you would never be allowed to do today. Like, we would drive around in the back of the ute. I remember, during the Brisbane floods, Dad made us a raft out of 44 gallon drums and bits of wood and we’d just float around the neighbourhood. Never mind there were electrical wires and snakes in the water! It was a real adventure.”

Sonia is conscious of making sure city girl Maggie gets the same thrills she did as a child – albeit with a few more safety restrictions. Recently the family took a mini country break where Maggie rode horses, joined a bushrangers’ club and cried her heart out when she had to leave.

“As a country kid, I always yearned for the city,” says Sonia. “As a city kid, I wonder if Maggie will actually gravitate more towards the country. You always yearn for what you don’t have.”

Still, the pioneering spirit of those early years is what Margaret believes has seen Sonia succeed in all she’s turned her hand to. Along with her husband, Adrian (who sadly passed away aged 80, in 2015, after a long illness), she has continued cheering from the sidelines at each of her daughter’s career milestones. While she still lists watching Sonia’s film debut in Strictly Ballroom as the thrilling family highlight, hearing that her daughter landed the hosting role on kids’ variety show Wonder World shortly thereafter was “a surprise and nice to see”.

“I couldn’t believe she did this all on her own,” marvels Margaret, who today lives on the Gold Coast, while Sonia, her partner, Craig McPherson, and their daughter, Maggie, have

made Sydney home.

“Everything she’s done here in

Sydney, she’s done by herself. We weren’t down here to support her. Credit goes to her for that.”

Now there’s another new project for Margaret to cheer on. Timed to launch ahead of her 54th birthday on August 28, Strictly You (“and yes, you can guess where I got that inspiration from,” chuckles Sonia) is a health and fitness website designed with an over-40 audience in mind which promises to deliver fun, dance-based workouts, and quick and easy meal plans for those wanting “to get a bit fabulous” without the pressure of a deadline.

“For me, whenever I had to get fit or think about exercise, it was something I kind of dreaded – unless I was going to a dance class and then I didn’t even feel like I was working out – I was just having a good time,” says Sonia. “So that started to make me think, there needs to be something that people can do to work out at home but have some fun while they’re doing it. This is not a warrior-type website where you have to lose a certain amount of weight in a certain time frame – there are lots of great websites out there that do all that. This is more of a lifestyle plan.”

A mix of dance, workouts and recipes, the fitness plan features a new routine that Sonia drops each week for users to perfect at home, following her video instructions. “Everything from Latin to cha-cha, jive, samba, salsa, merengue, pop, jazz, funk – it’s a real mixture of different dances that have been simplified,” she says. The dances are also complemented by short core, upper and lower body workouts. It’s a fitness plan for mind and body.

“We know for a fact,” Sonia explains, “that learning choreography helps people to ward off dementia. To keep your mind active, one of the best things you can do is learn choreography – it’s good for you. To break a sweat is going to make you feel good – there are all the endorphins that come with that. And if you eat nutritionally balanced food that is healthy and clean, you feel better about yourself. It’s all of those things that go together.”

“My whole life was dancing. I didn’t date boys.”

The meal plans have been created by a certified Australian-based team of nutritionists, and they’re designed to make life easier. Users enter their own and their family’s dietary needs to have a personalised range of recipes, along with a shopping list, created for the week.

While Strictly You could certainly be used as a weight-loss tool by those hoping to shed a few kilos,

Sonia is adamant her new venture is not about “dieting”. It’s just as valuable, she says, for those who simply want take the stress out of healthy food preparation with no weight loss in mind; those who are looking for new recipes or who want to try the dances out for fun. That is something Sonia, conscious that Maggie is growing up in a world dominated by social media and often consumed by outward appearances, is very keen to emphasise.

“I want Maggie to grow up with a really healthy respect for her body and a healthy relationship with food,” she says. “It’s why we never use the word ‘diet’ on the website because that’s just a short-term fix. It’s all about nutrition and meal planning. I just want Maggie to have a really healthy relationship with all those things so she doesn’t feel pressured.”

Thanks to Margaret – who Maggie is lovingly named after – Sonia has had a perfect role model for fostering that healthy relationship. Growing up in the Darling Downs, the Kruger kids ate whole foods that were cooked at home and often produced in their own backyard.

“We had chickens and our own eggs and we used to grow a lot too,” says Margaret, 76, of what she dished up for her family each evening and still prepares at home for herself now. “Everything was more natural in those days. There weren’t a lot of sprays around and you didn’t have a lot of pesticides on your food – you just ate what you didn’t see! A few holes in your lettuce where the grubs had been? If you couldn’t see it, it didn’t do you any harm.”

“There was certainly no convenience food in our home,” adds Sonia. “We were very Australian in that we were a meat-and-three-veg family. She wasn’t a particularly exotic cook, my mother, but everything tasted so good. She knows how to season food. Mum’s shepherd’s pie is still one of my favourite dishes – and one I still try to recreate.”

Also recreated in Sonia’s home is her mother’s attitude towards keeping fit and active. Having grown up attending dances at her local community hall – “all us girls did before we were married” – Margaret has continued to keep moving. And, she says, “my health is great” as a result.

“I do Zumba three times a week and I ride my pushbike four kilometres three or four times a week,” Margaret enthuses. “I’ll give Sonia’s exercises a go, too! I’ll give anything a go. I’m a curious person – I like to try something at least once.”

It’s this zest for life that Sonia and – if her boisterous laughter today is any indication – Maggie have inherited in spades. Nearly mid-way into her 50s, Sonia plans to go on enjoying all life has to offer and inspiring other women to do the same.

“Some people have this perception that you are not allowed to be sexy once you hit a certain age as a woman,” she scoffs. “Now you see women like Helen Mirren and go, ‘Well, yeah, you can!’ It’s more a state of mind and feeling good about yourself. It’s not what you weigh, not what you wear – it’s that overall kind of confidence I want to inspire. As a woman you should be able to feel sexy over the age of 50. Who says that you’re not allowed to? I rail against that.”

Find out more about Sonia’s new project at strictlyyou.com.au