Sequin sisters Strictly who are inspirational
Childhood in a riot-hit South African township. The tragic suicide of their brother. Racy romances. And now a rivalry as one’s a judge and the other a pro dancer on Britain’s favourite show...
MEET the marvellous Mabuse girls, the Super Sisters the BBC hopes will — finally — put to rest perennial complaints about racism on its most beloved and successful light entertainment show.
Motsi, 38, and Oti, 28, two dazzlingly talented dancers from South Africa, will earn £1million a year between them from Strictly Come Dancing and other shows, including the BBC’s Greatest Dancer and ITV’s Loose Women.
While Oti, short for Otlile, has been a dancer on the show since 2015, Motsi (Motshegetsi) is a newcomer to the BBC stalwart — hired this week to replace judge Darcey Bussell. It will certainly be a change for Strictly fans.
Where Dame Bussell was demure and always polite, Motsi is voluble, guffawing at mis-steps and lapses and weeping on screen when overcome by emotion.
Professionally speaking, the sisters’ stock has risen in concert. Both can trace their success back to living and working in Germany.
Motsi performed two seasons in Let’s Dance, the German version of Strictly, before being hired as a judge on that show in 2011. Oti then joined her on Let’s Dance for two seasons as a dancer before coming to conquer the UK.
They have already appeared on screen together in Gogglebox and Motsi looks likely to follow Oti onto the panel of Loose Women.
So which of these highly driven young women is going to come out on top in the end? WALTZING THEIR WAY TO LOVE (AND A JEALOUS HUSBAND) THEIR father is Peter Mabuse, a judge in Pretoria (a real judge, not a dance one). He was less than thrilled when all three of his daughters (Phemelo was a dancer, but is now a successful businesswoman) married white men.
Motsi said: ‘ Because of South Africa’s oppressive history my dad, though a very open human being, had to swallow heavy with these sons-in-law.’
Both sisters followed a well-waltzed path as dancers who married their dance partners.
Motsi’s first husband was blond, square-jawed German amateur Latin dancer Timo Kulczak, whom she met in Blackpool at a dance competition in 1999 when she was only 18.
They had neighbouring rooms in the same hotel and talked out of their windows for three hours ‘until the other people started complaining that we should shut up’.
While Motsi flew back to South Africa and Timo to Germany, they spoke on the phone every day for the next 18 months.
When she went to Germany for a holiday, the pair fell in love, and decided to ditch their respective dance partners and team up professionally as well as romantically.
They married in 2003 after Motsi realised she might have trouble extending her visa otherwise, ending up with a quickie ceremony in Denmark when they realised that marriage in Germany would be a beaurocratic nightmare. They carried on competing as a couple before Motsi met Ukranian dancer Evgenij Voznyuk, a Latin specialist who had been dancing since he was ten. They partnered from 2009, although she continued to dance with Timo for a further two years.
At this time Voznyuk had just married another dancer, Oksana Nikiforowa. To begin with the four were friends but by 2010 Oksana and Evgenij’s marriage — and dance partnership — was over.
By 2013, Motsi and Evgenij were German champions in Latin dance. But Motsi’s marriage was not faring well and eventually crumbled in 2014. Timo, who still lives in Germany, declines to comment on the reasons why.
Motsi and Evgenij declared their love in 2015 and were married in Majorca in 2017.
The following year they had a daughter and the two now run a dance school in Eschborn, near Frankfurt.
Meanwhile, Oti is married to Romanian dancer Marius Iepure. She said: ‘ When I switched from engineering to dancing, Marius was the first guy I started dancing with. We competed together, ended up dating then we got engaged.’
They took gold at the German National Show Dance Championships and silver at the World Latin Championships.
Marius popped the question in 2014 and they married later that year. Like Motsi’s first marriage, Denmark was the chosen destination. Oti said: ‘A few years later, my parents wanted us to have a wedding at home and we ended up having another in South Africa.’
Marius has Strictly experience himself. He performed in the Strictly group numbers in 2017, but has never been a pro dancer on the show.
Oti says Marius is jealous of her dance partners. He tells them: ‘Don’t touch my wife unless you have to.’ She said: ‘He is a real macho man with a thick European accent. He gives them the firm handshake. It’s sexy when you are standing there and your man is threatening your dance partner. I love it, I’m like, “that’s my man”.’
When ex- cricketer Graeme Swann, Oti’s partner last year, gave her flowers, Marius threw the bouquet away, saying: ‘She’s allergic to flowers.’
She says they hope to start a family soon. Motsi says she would love another child too. GIRLS WHO HAD TO GO BAREFOOT THE sisters grew up in South Africa during apartheid but were relatively privileged, going to private school and having dancing lessons.
Motsi said: ‘My mum put me in dance school when I was four then opened one for me and my sister because it was really difficult for young black girls to dance and compete.’
Before meeting the girls’ father, mum Dudu had been a
single parent, having given birth to son Neo at 18. She then met lawyer Peter, and after falling pregnant again, the couple married.
As Motsi cheerfully says in her autobiography Chili In The Blood: ‘Boy meets girl, and whoops, there it is. Suddenly I was born.’ After sister Phemelo arrived the family moved to Pretoria, where Oti was born. Dance was a passion for all three girls and all competed at a national level.
Motsi was the first to be successful. She said of taking up dancing: ‘ For the first time I felt such massive joy. I knew all of a sudden what it meant to be free.’
The family lived in the township of Mabopane, Pretoria, with the girls largely ignorant of the political situation. Motsi said: ‘We knew when riots had broken out because we weren’t allowed to leave the house, even to go to school.’
Tswana was the language spoken at home, and despite their relatively comfortable lives, the girls still went barefoot before school to save wear on their shoes.
Motsi was sporty, but did not shine at academic work. In her book she recalls being barely able to write her name, and her father hitting her if her homework was not up to scratch.
Once, she says, he hit her on the neck so hard that it left marks.
HAPPINESS MARRED BY TWIN TRAGEDIES
WHEN Motsi was 11 and Oti still a baby, their half brother Neo killed himself by drinking poison. he was just 18. Motsi believes he was troubled by ‘false friends’ at school.
More recently, in 2018, Oti was devastated when her celebrity dance partner from Let’s Dance fell from a cruise ship in Newfoundland, apparently deliberately. his body was never recovered.
Singer Daniel Kublbock had become famous after appearing on a German version of Pop Idol and had gone on to dance with Oti.
WHO’S THE BIGGEST DANCEFLOOR DIVA?
MOTSI calls Oti ‘the biggest diva of us all’, but out of admiration not sibling jealousy. Motsi says: ‘The name Otlile means ‘ She has arrived’, and so has she behaved since the day she was born. Of us three girls, she has the greatest confidence and self-awareness.’
The appreciation is reciprocated. Oti says: ‘Motsi is ten years older than me and I also have that respect for her, because there is a limit that you cannot go beyond. She is my older sister, mom number two.’ She adds: ‘My sister was my first trainer. She’s still my role model and inspiration.’
While Motsi is now following in Oti’s footsteps in coming to the UK, it was Oti who followed her sister to Germany.
Motsi was based in Frankfurt when Oti also decided to emigrate to Germany to pursue her dance career. Later, when Oti joined Let’s Dance, Motsi was already on the judging panel. She gave her sister a perfect 10 at one point, though she insists she is impartial when it comes to judging her sibling.
As a judge, Motsi witnessed what became an infamous moment on German TV; Oti’s dress completely splitting while she was on stage with Kublbock and she had to be sewn into her costume on live TV.
After the mishap, Motsi said: ‘She was totally cool. everyone else was fuming about the dress and she stood there looking good.’
Now Oti will be able to introduce Motsi to her Strictly pals. She is popular among the dancers, especially with the more recent recruits A.J. Pritchard and Katya and Neil Jones.
The sisters are accomplished linguists — Motsi speaks eight languages and Oti five.
MAKING A FORTUNE WITH THE FOXTROT
BOTH ladies are queens of the deal, but Motsi is more successful financially. She is being paid £ 200,000 for Strictly and gets around £120,000 on Let’s Dance, which she can continue as it is filmed in the spring and Strictly in the autumn.
She has also earned money from Weight Watchers, becoming a WW ambassador after struggling with her weight post-pregnancy.
Oti earns around £ 35,000 on Strictly but much more, about £65,000, for the Strictly live tour.
She also earned £100,000 for jury duty on The Greatest Dancer, a BBC talent show.
She has been a presenter on The One Show and Loose Women, too. Between them they will easily take home £1million a year, particularly as Oti has entered into commercial partnerships with brands including Specsavers, Tesco and Lancome.
THE CURVES THAT RUN IN THE FAMILY
The sisters wear wigs for professional appearances — and both have curvy figures, which Oti says run in the family. her 28GG bust caused her some anguish as a young woman.
Oti said: ‘I remember fitting my first bra and I was crying.
‘I was like, this looks so bad and I look so massive compared to the other girls. Nobody picked on me for it and no one discriminated against me for it and I think that helped my nerves about being out in a bra with sequins on.’
She added: ‘All my family has big boobs. I was hitting puberty way before other girls. I’m lucky that my mum has the same issue and she was able to teach me how to deal with it.
‘We all come in different shapes and sizes and I think it’s really important we all embrace and celebrate the skin that we’re in.’
Motsi sings from the same hymn sheet, particularly after being ‘fat shamed’ when she was pregnant and on screen in 2018.
She said: ‘ Women in pregnancy do not have to participate in such a discussion about their body.
‘The weight of a woman is something very personal — and that applies especially in pregnancy. Body shaming of women in pregnancy is sad and disgusting.’