“The attitude here is that everyone loves the underdog,” says Jason Gilkison, “or the person who looks like they’re not taking themselves too seriously.” He might be describing British culture in general, but we’re talking about TV dance shows, specifically Strictly Come Dancing, on which former champion dancer Gilkison is creative director. He has worked on similar shows in Australia (his home country), South Africa and the US, too. “In America they just want the best, they don’t care if you’ve had past dance training, if you’re Jennifer Grey or a Pussycat Doll. Here that goes against you.”
In between creating choreography for the Eurovision song contest and planning a new musical, I Should Be So Lucky, based on the songs of Stock, Aitken and Waterman, Gilkison is currently rehearsing the UK tour of Strictly Come Dancing – The Professionals, the TV show’s “rebellious little sister” where the pros really get a chance to show what they’re made of. This autumn’s Strictly will be the 21st series. Who is his dream Strictly contestant? “Last night we were talking about it and somebody said, ‘has Nigella ever done the show?’ That’d be great. Joanna Lumley would be my ultimate. And Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French …”
The UK show puts a lot of effort into getting the partnerships right, he says. Sometimes the connection is clear when the dancers walk through the door. “Lisa Riley and Robin Windsor, when they saw each other it was instantly Will & Grace,” he laughs. “I remember seeing Kevin Clifton and Stacey Dooley talking about something someone had said on Twitter, and they were both so passionate, I thought OK, they’re keepers.” Clifton and Dooley are now a couple and have a daughter together.
The best routines, he says, are the ones where you start to see the celebs “open up, turn a corner, or surprise themselves”. “Ed Balls, I remember, on the first week he said, ‘I’ll wear a suit. I’ll do the waltz, the tango.’ Then in week three we put him as The Mask [from the Jim Carrey film] and once he had the mask and costume on he was like: ‘Smokin!’ He had this newfound confidence.” The fun has to be on the celebs’ own terms, though, not using them for a cheap laugh. “Gone are the days where we let them roll on the floor,” says Gilkison.
Ballroom dancing is in Gilkison’s blood. His Dundonian grandfather emigrated to Australia and opened a dance studio in Perth in 1931. He’d told Jason stories of hitchhiking to Blackpool to go to the Tower Ballroom on Saturday nights. When Gilkison later travelled there to compete, he had a sense of coming full circle. He gets a bit choked up about it even as we talk, especially as his British citizenship has just come through.
Now 57, Gilkison insists that as a kid he wasn’t a good dancer. “I was terrible,” he says. But as “the awkward only child”, he enjoyed the social aspect. He was partnered with another student, Peta Roby, when they were seven, and in 1980 the World Ballroom Dancing Championships was held in Perth. “We’d never seen anything like it,” he says. “The best dancers from around the world. Shirley Ballas was there. That was the moment Peta and I said: ‘We’re going to become world champions.’ And then we just didn’t stop until we did.”
From being at the bottom of the scorecard they worked and worked until they got to the top, and they were Australian Latin champions for 16 years running. “When you share a common goal with somebody – we see it on Strictly all the time – when suddenly two people want to achieve the same thing, they can climb Mount Everest together.”
Roby and Gilkison went on to direct the ballroom and Latin stage show Burn the Floor, a training ground for many Strictly pros. Gilkison has worked with pop stars including Kylie and Robbie Williams and on the Tony-nominated Dame Edna: Back With a Vengeance. He’s a go-to for big stage spectacle, hence the Eurovision gig, where for one of the semi-finals he’ll have 60 dancers fronted by three drag queens in a celebration of freedom and acceptance. Even for someone used to working on prime-time TV, the scale of the Eurovision production is boggling. “It’s such a big team, so many creatives, so many opinions. It’s bonkers.”
Although Ukraine won Eurovision last year, this year’s competition is being held in Liverpool. It’s a tricky balancing act for the organisers to recognise the seriousness of the war while bringing the uplifting fun and fluff people except from Eurovision and adding a bit of “the Liverpool sense of humour”.
Gilkison’s husband is a scouser, so he knows it well. “The drag culture in Liverpool is pretty huge and a night out in Liverpool, you know, you never forget,” he says. In early Eurovision discussions they’d talked about inviting the late Paul O’Grady to appear. “I think the three queens know that they’re representing him,” says Gilkison. “There’ll be a lot of sass, a lot of attitude. I think it’s going to be great.”
Strictly Come Dancing – The Professionals is touring until 31 May. I Should Be So Lucky is touring from 2 November. Eurovision is on 9, 11 and 13 May.
