Pierre Dulaine was hailed as "dancer and teacher extraordinaire" by the New York Times. He was the inspiration for the Antonio Banderas film Take the Lead, and along with partner Yvonne Marceau he starred in the Broadway musical Grand Hotel.
His career began in England, where he won a number of titles before moving to the US in 1971. Since 1976 he and his partner Yvonne Marceau have performed throughout the world and have won numerous awards and accolades, including the British Exhibition Championships, Dance Magazine’s award for excellence,the National Dance Council of America award and the Dance Educators of America Award. In 2005 he and Yvonne received the American for the Arts Award for their contribution to their work for Arts in Education.
Pierre also took his dancing out of the studio and into the streets with his community outreach program Dancing Classrooms. Now in more than 200 New York schools, Dancing Classrooms helps over 24,000 children gain social awareness, confidence, and self esteem - crucial life skills as they move into young adulthood.
Here, Pierre talks about what being a Baby Ballroom judge means to him…
What are you looking for as a judge?
I am looking for the inner feeling from people. The feeling of the movement and the music and working together as one. Four feet being two and working for each other and not singly. It’s not always technique that is the most important thing. It’s believing in the dance that you are seeing.
What advice would you offer the contestants?
Just be yourself - be a child. I work with children of all levels in America so it will be different to see them here. I don’t want the natural part of the child’s development to be taken away with technicality. It’s about them enjoying it and that will come across in their performance.
Why do you think ballroom dancing has become popular again?
People are not just watching it nowadays – they are getting up and doing it. Ballroom dancing is a conversation between two people – for a boy to dance with his mother is a way of forming a relationship, two children dancing together can form friendships. It can cross all barriers. All of these different combinations of people dancing together have their different emotions but they are all special.
There has been talk about introducing dancing like this in schools to help fitness. What do you think about that?
If Jamie Oliver can do it with cooking I can do it! I’d love to bring my techniques into schools and in America they are being rolled out now across the country. I started in New York schools and now its part of the curriculum and we do ten week courses with classes of children. Last year fourteen thousand children went through our programme. Ballroom dancing and putting the arts generally back into schools gets kids off the streets and allows them to get to know one another in a way they never have before. If you are dancing with a classmate you get to know people differently and that’s good.
