For Strictly dancer Gorka Marquez, the key to happiness is getting the balance right.
So although he’s about to embark on a gruelling 41-date UK dance tour over a less than two-month period, he’s determined to squeeze in as much time as possible with his fiancée, the actress and Hits Radio presenter Gemma Atkinson, and their two young children.
“The good thing about the tour is we only do one show a day,” he explains, “and some of the places are near to us in Manchester, so with those shows, I’ll always drive back home.
“It’s miles in the body, obviously, because you’ve done a show and then you have to drive two hours back, but it’s worth it because I get to wake up in the morning with Gemma and the kids, see them for a little bit, have a catch-up with them, take the kids to school and then go back to work.
“So they don’t feel the difference of me being away – it’s more like, ‘Oh, daddy’s gone to work, and then in the night, he comes home.’
“It’s difficult with every job, I guess – all jobs require time. But now I’ve been at home since Strictly finished, so I’ve spent all these weeks at home.”
And the Spaniard, who has Mia, aged five, and Thiago, aged one, with Atkinson, says striking the right balance between work and family time is a major reason why he missed this year’s Strictly Come Dancing Live! tour, which finished this week.
“When people ask why didn’t you do the arena tour, that’s one of the reasons,” he reveals. “I have to find balance – I think life is about balance, not just work, work, work or just family. I want to keep both of them, so I make choices.”
Instead, he chose to do his own Speakeasy tour with his Strictly Come Dancing co-star dancer Karen Hauer, who he says is “like my sister”. He describes the new show, which emulates the edgy atmosphere of speakeasy clubs from the 1920s through to the 1970s , as “passionate, and dark with intensity”, and explains: “When you think of Strictly, you think of all the sparkles, the glitz, the glamour, and it’s not going to be like that.
“When someone comes to a speakeasy, there’s going to be something more underground, undercover. The idea comes from numbers like Cabaret and Chicago, and both of us really enjoy the mood and style during those dances – so why not bring this into a show?”
And, amazingly, for the last few weeks of the tour Marquez, 34, will be doing shows in the UK and then flying to Spain, where he’s a judge on the Spanish Dancing with the Stars, and then immediately flying back to do his next UK tour date.
“So I’m going to be finishing up a show in the evening, getting on the plane, travelling to Spain, doing a show in Spain, coming back and doing the UK show the next day,” he says matter-of-factly.
“I’m going to try and document it, because it will be quite fun.”
Fun or not, after such incredible hard work, Marquez will finally be able to take a deep breath and enjoy some family time. He says: “Then I have another three months at home with the kids, because they grow up very quick and it’s those simple things like when they lose their first tooth, or walk for the first time, say their first word, first dance performance at school. You don’t want to miss those things, because they go very quick.
“But also, you’re going to keep doing what you do, because they are proud of it, and they love to watch you doing it.”
But keeping doing what he does means Marquez has to keep very fit, and he describes himself as a “very healthy fitness enthusiast”, who trains five times a week and runs two to three times a week, complemented by daily ice baths and saunas.
“I don’t do it because I have to, I do it because I love to,” he stresses.
But being a professional dancer, working out isn’t all he does at the gym.
“When I’m in the gym, I’m playing my Spanish music, and I’m always just having a little dance and I just start to film it,” he says. “People love to watch me dance, I guess, and I sometimes share workouts, and people might find that boring, so I just share what I do when I’m not doing the workout, which is dancing.”
Marquez eats as healthily as possible, “mostly natural foods – veg, meats, nothing processed. Lots of water and electrolytes,” and loves cooking too.
“A lot of people ask me always about my cooking,” he says. “So this year, I’m going to make an effort of recording more videos of me cooking and posting them, because every time I post pictures of the food I make, people ask me to give them the recipe. They’re very simple recipes – quick things you can do to eat healthy.”
He says he does a lot of the cooking at home, but stresses that Atkinson, who he met when she competed on Strictly in 2017, does some too. “Most of the time I would say I cook, but she also does,” he says. “I just love it and I find it therapeutic – I love to play peaceful guitar music, and I play it when I’m making breakfast. I put it on for Thiago to sleep as well – he loves it.”
Marquez and Atkinson got engaged in 2021, but still have no immediate plans to tie the knot. “I don’t think it will happen this year,” he admits. “We’re good the way we are. We have two children, we have a house – getting married is just a document, to be honest. In our heads, we’re married already.
“Marriage these days doesn’t have as much value, it’s not like the old days. I think the value is in the compromise with one another.”
And that compromise means Atkinson looks after the children when her partner’s away, and vice-versa.
“The good thing about Gemma and I is that we’re great team,” says Marquez affectionately. “For example, she just had a weekend away with her friends because they got it for her 40th birthday. So I stayed with the children, and I absolutely loved it.
“She was like: ‘Are you going to miss me?’, but I actually had the best time, just me and the kids. We had picnics, we went to the park. Saturday night, we ordered takeaway pizzas and made a picnic in the living room watching a movie. It was fantastic.”Gorka Marquez and Karen Hauer’s Speakeasy tour starts on February 24 and runs through to April in theatres across the UK. For tickets and more information, visit speakeasylive.co.uk
