Debbie: My dance training? It held me back
Strictly star blasts critics who say she has advantage
STRICTLY star Debbie McGee has hit back at critics who claim she has an unfair advantage because of her previous dance training.
Ms McGee, who studied ballet, said she was having to learn every single dance from scratch and she said her previous experience of ballet was a disadvantage.
The 59-year-old said: ‘The people who say that really have no understanding of dance.
‘When I did ballet I stopped as a dancer when I was about 23.
‘That training in a way is a disadvantage because the muscles were trained differently. I haven’t done that for over 30 years.’
Some viewers say it is unfair that Ms McGee, one of the favourites to win, danced with the Iranian National Ballet in the 1970s and established her own company, Ballet Imaginaire. One wrote: ‘Debbie McGee had ballet and dance training up to a few years ago, it’s blindingly obvious.’
Speaking before last night’s live quarter-final, in which she danced an American smooth to Memory from Cats with Giovanni Pernice, Debbie said in response to her critics: ‘What people keep saying is I make it look so easy. But they don’t realise the training I put in and how awful I am on Monday and the progress I make between a Monday and a Saturday. You need to ask Giovanni about that.’ Debbie, who lost her husband Paul Daniels last year, added she was flattered that people thought she might be in a relationship with 27-yearold Pernice, nicknamed the Italian Stallion. But she insisted they were just good
‘People don’t realise the work I put in’
friends. She said: ‘For a woman of my age it’s very flattering, but we just have the greatest working partnership and we do have chemistry.’ Also dancing were Mollie King and AJ Pritchard, doing a rumba to Hopelessly Devoted To You from Grease, and Alexandra Burke and Gorka Marquez with a Charleston to Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious from Mary Poppins.