The BBC has unveiled the first two contestants for its next series of Strictly Come Dancing, one of whom will be the show’s first ever blind star.
The comic Chris McCausland’s inclusion in the show has thrilled the small but dedicated community of visually impaired ballroom dancers, who are already celebrating the inclusion of a category for visually impaired dancers at the prestigious Open World international dance competition in Blackpool for the first time.
Rashmi Becker, who set up Step Change Studios in 2017 to offer accessible dance classes for disabled people, is hoping for Strictly to give blind ballroom dancing a similar boost to the increase in British Sign Language (BSL) that followed the deaf contestant Rose Ayling-Ellis’s appearance on the show last year.
“I’m always asked, how can you dance in a wheelchair or if you’re blind? To be on such a prominent show [as Strictly], it raises awareness of that disability and challenges people’s preconceptions,” Becker said.
She was approached by a Strictly producer back in 2018 for her advice on including disabled performers, and is thrilled to “fast forward to see so many different types of disability represented”.
“They’re the people the public often get behind and really root for and become the nation’s favourites,” she said.
Becker said her blind ballroom classes “just took off” after launching and are continuing to grow.
Step Change Studios classes have an emphasis on non-verbal communication and physical adjustments, including how to use cues in the music and follow its pace. Teachers use precise, descriptive language, for example specifying how many degrees they have to turn to get the right angle, and using voice or clapping to indicate where they are in a room.
The dancers are usually led by sighted partners, but they’re “not pulling people around the room”, Becker said, and as dancers develop, many are able to take the lead.
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Many will walk around the space in advance of their dance, feeling where there is airflow or getting a feel for the acoustics of the room, and, for some visually impaired people, identifying areas of shadow or vague shapes.
As well as enjoying learning to dance, lots of participants tell Becker they feel more confident and less isolated.
Martia Bevan, 59, from south London, lost her sight in her early 20s and is now completely blind. She tried a couple of mainstream classes but found them inaccessible, and concluded that dance was “something I always wanted to do but thought I couldn’t”.
When she found Step Change, “I thought, ‘I’ll give it a go’, and it opened up a whole new world for me,” she said.
Bevan found it helpful the way the dances are broken down into individual steps, with lots of emphasis on repetition; the level of individual attention paid to each person; and the supportive atmosphere.
She is thrilled by Strictly’s new contestant. “It promotes awareness around what people can do, rather than society’s traditional perspective on disability as being limiting and restricting. It’s a real gamechanger,” she said.
Kirsty James, 35, from Caerphilly, a policy officer at the Royal National Institute for the Blind , starred on the TV show Dare to Dance last year, in which she learned a ballroom dance – including lifts – for the first time since losing her eyesight.
“Not being able to see myself in the mirror any more, that was totally different, but it gave me more freedom because I wasn’t watching myself. It really challenged that perfectionism in me. I’ve got to go in with a different mindset, I have to learn differently and be open to that,” she said.
James has since joined a mainstream dance class, where her dance partner assists her with learning moves, and she always secures a spot at the front to get extra help from teachers.
Kinnari Patel, 31, from Kingston, finds the rhythm and structure of ballroom dancing suits visually impaired people. She also prepares intensely to develop muscle memory for the steps.
“Every time I make a coffee I do a little ChaCha move, so I get it ingrained in my body,” she said, adding that once she had mastered a dance, “you are then in a normal dance, where you’re performing in your bones and soul”.
She said: “I found it such an accomplishment. When we did Blackpool, that was one of my takeaways: it doesn’t matter how you learn, the end result can be the same.”