Truly madly STRICTLY
Theirs is the love story so romantic it has been made into a dance show. But it hasn’t been all smiles and sequins for Strictly pros KAREN and KEVIN CLIFTON. They’ve navigated everything from depression to (three) divorces as they waltz to their happy eve
For millions of fans of Strictly Come Dancing, married professionals Kevin and Karen Clifton are the glittering embodiment of a perfect, permatanned couple who never, ever put a foot wrong. And in May, they will embark on a 22-date UK tour with a show called Kevin & Karen Dance, in which the couple will to tell their story through the medium of dance – ‘how a boy like me from Grimsby ever managed to get together with this beautiful girl from Venezuela,’ says Kevin.
So far, it all sounds rather sugary and predictable in a ballroom-Barbie-and-Ken (sorry, Kev) kind of way. But their story, it turns out, has more twists than an Argentine tango.
We are sitting in an east London studio. Karen, 34, is looking exotically beautiful in full make-up and fake lashes. Clean-cut Kevin, 34, is looking like a young Mark Owen from Take That in immaculate black trousers and a black top. They are both easygoing, smiley people. The only jarring note is that Kevin is tucking into a huge piece of chocolate cake – but then with all that dancing, he can surely eat what he likes.
They are both well used to being viewed as little more than television dolls. They spend their lives hiding behind sparkling smiles – even on the show they are expert ventriloquists, hissing orders to their celebrity charges as they sweep them around the floor. ‘Everyone does it,’ says Karen. ‘You have a fixed grin on your face but you are giving orders: “Move your arm”, “Now go right”, “Lift your leg.” And your celebrity partner is normally grinning and hissing back at you: “What’s next?”’
After bravely smiling through a Michael Jackson number gone wrong (his mistake) during his first series of Strictly with TV presenter Susanna Reid in 2013, Kevin tells me he was so furious he punched through the wall of his dressing room. ‘Susanna was desperately trying to calm me down, but I was so enraged with myself I couldn’t help it. Things get very heated.’
In short, their soon-to-bestaged story includes, in Kevin’s case, a ballroom rebellion, two previous failed marriages, depression, near bankruptcy, a refusal to partake in high-level corruption, and an initial ‘no’ from the BBC due to the fact he was a full-on goth complete with make-up and long black hair. And, in Karen’s case, an escape from the crimeridden streets of the Bronx for a little Latina latchkey kid, who has also been married before and is not half as tough as she thinks she looks (‘People are scared of me because I often put on an act,’ she says). It also includes a marriage proposal that took place centrestage in the West End.
On the surface, Kevin and Karen are as different as chalk and cheese. ‘People think we are an odd couple,’ says Kevin. ‘But we are more alike than anyone knows,’ adds Karen, whose Strictly partners have included Jeremy Vine (‘I tell Kevin he’s the only man I would ever run away with – it’s that voice’), Hairy Biker Dave Myers (‘He got me into cooking. I have complete confidence in the kitchen now thanks to him’) and Will Young, who quit the show after three weeks citing personal reasons.
In the media storm that followed, it was alleged (among other theories about clashes with judge Len Goodman) that Karen had been too harsh with him. ‘Will was everything I had always wanted in a partner,’ she says. ‘He could move, he could interpret, he understood music. We got on well...Will could do it, so I treated him more as an equal and, yes, I was tougher. But I saw him as an artist who wanted to deliver the best for the show. I actually don’t know what happened or why he left. He didn’t call me to say why. That was it. I saw him in Manchester recently and we spoke. I didn’t ask. I accept that it wasn’t for him.’
Dance was never the plan for Karen. Her mother Miriam Cardenas uprooted her three children (Karen has a brother, Jean, 36, and a sister, Carol, 44) from Venezuela to New York City when her youngest was eight, soon after their father – who is no longer in contact with Karen – walked out of their lives. Miriam’s aim was
to give her family a better life, but her job as a housekeeper was three hours away from the small apartment in the Bronx. Karen says: ‘We arrived in December. It was so cold. My mum had to work away from home and my sister got a job, so my brother and I had to look after ourselves a lot. It wasn’t easy.’
At school, Karen’s inability to speak English further alienated her. ‘I tried to make myself as invisible as possible,’ she says. In an attempt to help her, a teacher suggested she be put forward for a project designed to help shy, under-confident children through dance and performance. ‘I was so lucky,’ she says. ‘The programme lasted four years and it was my lifeline. Bad things happened around me – there were drugs and gangs on the streets – but my focus was on this one-hour escape every week. Dance saved me.
Thousands of miles away, Kevin never had any doubt that dance would be his life. He was born with a silver sequin in his mouth as his parents Keith and Judy were world-champion Latin dancers, as was his aunt Lynn. Even his grandmother Peggy was a quickstep world champion and his sister, 33year-old Joanne (who is also one of the Strictly pros), would become a world champion in 2013 at the Professional World Dancesport Games.
‘My parents ran a dance school,’ Kevin says. ‘From as early as I can remember I was at the back of classes joining in.’
He and Joanne paired up and were soon winning medals at competitions all over the world. At school, he avoided being bullied by ‘being the first to make jokes’ about his passion for dance. ‘I would walk into class with fake tan just on my neck and make cracks about my costumes.’
At 15 he stopped wanting to dance with Joanne. ‘It felt weird,’ he says. ‘There is a chemistry between dancers and it didn’t seem right to be dancing with my sister. She understood. She stopped doing Latin and focused completely on ballroom.’
But as much as Kevin enjoyed the buzz of the audience, he never felt totally happy in the world of dance competitions. ‘It is a very small world and insanely competitive,’ he says. ‘My thing was about entertaining the audience, but other dancers thought I was mad because I just cared about getting the biggest cheers, which doesn’t always get you the technical marks.’
At the age of 19, he was broke and pushing his parents toward bankruptcy by borrowing money to fund his dancing. ‘You have to pay to travel, pay to have dance lessons. I couldn’t get a job because I was always leaving to go to Europe or Miami for a competition.’
He married his dance partner aged 20, but she left him three years later when he rebelled against the competition world. ‘We got to a stage where we were at the top of our game but we hadn’t won a world championship,’ he says. ‘We were approached and told that if we paid the right people, took certain classes with certain pro teachers, we would be guaranteed the title. It would cost more than £10,000 in all and I just felt somewhere it had all gone wrong.
‘I fell out of love with it. My wife divorced me because it was her life. I fell into depression.’
In his disillusionment with competitive dancing, Kevin went to watch choreographer Matthew Bourne’s ballet of Edward Scissorhands. ‘It changed everything,’ he says. ‘I saw something different in dance; this incredible, emotional performance.’ He dyed his hair black, began wearing make-up, painted his nails (he changed his look in 2013 after Strictly rejected him for looking too outrageous) and started dating a dancer called Clare Craze.
At this stage, a man entered his life who would eventually knit his future together with Karen: the renowned choreographer Jason Gilkison, who is director of choreography on Strictly (tipped to replace Len Goodman as head judge) and also directing the couple’s show Kevin & Karen Dance. Jason approached Kevin and asked him to join a new show – a fusion of ballroom, modern and contemporary dance – called Burn The Floor, which opened on Broadway in 2009.
‘It was my rebellion,’ Kevin says. ‘My parents thought I’d gone mad and run away to join the circus.’
He married again, to Clare at the age of 24, but the marriage fell apart within three years. ‘It didn’t work out,’ he says. ‘It was part of my rebellion and we drifted apart.’
Karen shrugs. After being accepted on a scholarship for New York’s High School of Performing Arts (the original Fame school) she teamed up with dancer Matthew Hauer, who she then married and divorced after a matter of years. I ask if it is somehow obligatory for a dancer to marry their partner and Kevin smiles. ‘It happens. It’s so intense to dance together and you get swept away. We had both made mistakes so when we got together we knew this had to be it, for real. There won’t be a Strictly curse for us. This is it.’
Karen nods. She and Kevin met through Jason, who scouted her for Burn The Floor from the US TV show So You Think You Can Dance. ‘I was very unhappy at the time,’ she says. ‘My marriage had ended, I was doing a TV show that I found incredibly difficult both emotionally and physically, and I was on my own in Los Angeles. And then late in 2009 I joined Burn The Floor.’
Kevin, however, left within weeks of Karen joining to star in the West End production of Dirty Dancing. He returned to Burn The Floor for a tour in the US in 2011 and the sparks flew. ‘We got to know each other as friends first,’ says Kevin. ‘We’d both been through a lot and we understood each other. One night we went out and I told her I was going to put my cards on the table, that I wanted to be with her. She said that was what she wanted too and that was it.’
Kevin proposed in the midst of a Burn The Floor performance at London’s Shaftesbury Theatre in 2013. ‘Jason asked Karen to go on stage to accept one of those huge charity cheques,’ says Kevin. ‘But the cheque actually had “Will you marry me?” written on it. The audience went crazy.’ When they married in 2015, Strictly celebrities Susanna Reid and Frankie Bridge, and pros Brendan Cole, Janette Manrara and Aljaz Skorjanec were among the guests. The couple live in south London with their mongrel rescue dog Betty. Kevin’s sister Joanne – this year’s Strictly winner with sports presenter Ore Oduba – is currently living with them, and Karen is partnering Ore on the Strictly tour as Joanne is appearing in a production of Thoroughly Modern Millie.
Beyond Strictly (neither yet know if they will be included in this year’s show) and their tour, they also have the Kevin & Karen Dance School. Dancing is Karen and Kevin’s life. While they don’t dance on nights out, says Kevin, on most evenings they can be found dancing in their living room.
Kevin laughs: ‘We hire a studio and sit there, drink coffee, talk, laugh and do not a lot else. Then we go home, push the sofas back and start on our dances.’ Karen adds: ‘Even in the shower Kevin will be dancing.’
Now that would make a very interesting scene in the dance story of their lives.