Dancing Out of Darkness

by Kristina Rhianoff

  That year the finals were at the Blackpool Tower. It was the only time they ever did the final there, and while it was brilliant to be dancing in this iconic location, in an already exhausting week it was just an added pressure to travel there and get settled. By then it had been thirteen weeks of rehearsals. When the show starts everyone looks so healthy and raring to go and then by the finals, we’re all looking like death because we are so, so tired.

  We travelled to Blackpool on the Thursday and then on Friday we had a 7am call to be on BBC1’s Breakfast via a live link. So we had to be at the Tower and ready at 7am, which means you have to be up and in make-up by 6am. All three couples struggled with this early start! The place is magnificent, though, and there is something so beautiful about it, you do forget the tiredness and the cold – and it was freezing cold that December too, I remember. We had three dances to perform on the Saturday and an extra one to prepare in case we made it through to the final two: our favourite dance, the judges’ choice, our show dance and then one you haven’t done on the show before. So the fourth dance only happens if you make it to the last two couples, but you still have to prepare one!

  When the final started, Joe and his family and Jason’s family were there in the audience, and it was really special. Our first dance was the tango to the soundtrack, ‘I Will Survive’! All very camp, it was the judges’ choice and we loved it. Our show dance got full marks, 10s from all the judges, and it was fantastic. The judges loved it, although I think that Craig thought I was on a mission to kill Jason!

  ‘Jason, you need to charge that woman and lock her up, I can’t believe all the things she is making you do,’ he told him in a half-joking, half-serious way.

  After getting a perfect score from the judges, Jason said to me that maybe there was a chance we would win the show, and it was a bit sad as in my heart I knew this wasn’t going to happen but I didn’t have the guts to tell him. The final two were undoubtedly going to be actress Chelsee Healey and Harry Judd: it was their competition from the word go. The press were certainly saying it would be down to the two of them and they hadn’t even considered Jason to be a runner-up.

  We were called back for the elimination to find out who would be finishing in third place and when Bruce Forsyth announced us, I was ready to say how proud I was of Jason for getting so far. But Jason spoke first and said: ‘Without this woman’s vision and belief in me, I wouldn’t be here. It is her outstanding choreography that brought us here and her dedication. We wouldn’t be here without that.’ I was so touched; I couldn’t say anything! It was wonderful for him to say in front of the whole country how much he admired me and I was very honoured.

  After that final show and after party, Joe drove us back to Wales and I slept and ate non-stop for two weeks – I didn’t do anything else! There were two weeks to recover from the rehearsals before the Strictly tour started but I just felt so sick. I had a chest infection and was on antibiotics and I felt completely wrecked. And I wasn’t the only one as when I met up with the dancers for the tour again they all said they had spent their Christmas in a similar way to mine – sleeping and feeling ill. I suppose it was worth it, though: that series with Jason Donovan really put my name back out there as a strong choreographer and dancer.

  But it damaged my relationship with Joe, without a doubt. I hadn’t seen him for more or less the entire duration of the show, and although we spent a lovely Christmas and New Year together in Wales – with my mum too, which made it extra special – we both knew this was just a brief get-together. I had the tour to start at the beginning of the New Year and that meant another eight weeks on the road, dancing with Jason.

  I think after that series I should probably have left the show. If I had really wanted to settle down with Joe that would have been the time to do it, to give up work and focus on my relationship. But I was so worried about losing my identity and just becoming someone’s girlfriend. I didn’t want all my hard work to be forgotten, I wanted to carry on working, and so I did. I was back on Strictly in August 2012, although we spent some good quality time together in between – we had some lovely holidays in Italy and Wales. By then I think Joe must have realised my heart wasn’t in it and he was still caught up in a lot of negativity online, which didn’t help. There were negative comments on Facebook and Twitter, and unfortunately he was vulnerable and was affected by them.

  For the life of me I don’t understand how people can be that nasty when they go on Twitter and just abuse another person for no reason. So why am I on Twitter? It’s the quickest way to get a message across to fans or people who vote for us or watch our shows, and I always want the chance to thank them and send them a sincere message. Joe hated all the comments, he hated what people were saying about us, and I felt the same. We would show each other the messages and it was unkind what we were reading; some of them were very brutal – insinuating we were cheating on each other, etc. That sort of thing really does prey on your mind… it plants a nasty seed.

  So when the next series of Strictly came along, I thought long and hard about whether or not I should do it. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy doing it, I just felt that Joe and I were fighting over little things and we were drifting apart. I thought to myself, ‘OK, this is a job, it is a good job and it helps me support my family in Russia but I have to think about Joe, too.’

  So I had to make a decision: it was either Strictly or my relationship with Joe. In my mind, if I agreed to keep doing the shows, the relationship would fall to pieces. But I also had to be ready to quit dancing, something that had been part of my life since I was six years old. I had to feel it would be 100 per cent the right decision. And I didn’t feel it: I didn’t feel that I was ready to sacrifice my work for my relationship and so by accepting the next series of Strictly, I knew this would potentially be the final nail in the coffin for my relationship with Joe.

  I was partnered with Bond actor Colin Salmon that year and unfortunately it was a really weird pairing from the word go – he was 6ft 4in and I’m 5ft 2in! Why they put us together I have no idea, but I do know there were several queries from the audience as to why the production team thought we would suit each other. We certainly did click well, though – working together was good fun and we enjoyed each other’s company, but it was just so hard to dance with one another! The Latin dances were OK, but the ballroom dances were impossible, really, as he had to bend his knees so much in order to lower his frame and I would have to wear three-and-a-half inch heels – the highest heel you can get for dancing! Dancing in those shoes for eight hours a day made my feet constantly swollen and I would have to put them in an ice bucket as soon as I got home. There was no way I could rehearse in my flats in training because it would be too difficult for him.

  We were eliminated quite early, in Week 5, but I think Colin would have gone a lot further if he was partnered with someone more his height. He had great rhythm, being a saxophone player who knows music very well, and was very talented. I became good friends with him and his wife, who is a gifted artist. At one of our rehearsals she was doing little sketches of us dancing. She gave them to me and I still have them. When we got eliminated I thought, ‘OK, maybe this is a sign.’ So I decided not to do the tour – I wouldn’t have a celebrity to dance with but I could take part as a company dancer – in order to spend some time with Joe instead.

  I wanted to give us a chance to reconnect, so we went to Barbados and had a lovely time over Christmas and New Year with his family and friends. At that point I did feel that things were a lot more positive between us and we were back on track.

  Then I got an offer to do a West End show with Robin Windsor. We were asked to be the lead couple in a world-famous show called Burn the Floor. The show was coming to the West End for four months and because they wanted a bit more interest when it was in London, they wanted a couple from Strictly to perform, so they asked Robin and me. Previously, Robin had worked with the Australian company and started dancing with them when he was nineteen
years old. He had taken part in three world tours with them over ten years and then left them and came straight to Strictly. So for him, it was like going back to his roots, but for any dancer to get the chance to perform on a West End stage, well, it is a massive achievement and I definitely wanted to be part of it.

  But first I had to speak to Joe as it was a big commitment. I told him how much I would love to do the tour and how much it would mean to me. He just said: ‘Yeah, fine, you have to do it.’ So I signed the contract for Burn the Floor and, in a way, I think I signed the end of our relationship. I would be doing eight shows a week at the Shaftesbury Theatre with only one day off a week.

  So we barely saw each other; we were just like friends living together in the same flat. He was always going away to Wales or to other places to be with his friends, to socialise and go out drinking. When he wasn’t doing that he was just at home in the flat waiting for me to come home from work. He told me that it got to him after a while – he thought that he was coming second to work and he didn’t like how he felt. I understood how hard it was and we had a lot of respect and feelings for one another, but the love wasn’t there any more: we had become more like mates and only saw each other one day a week.

  Doing a West End show is very, very intense. You are doing eight shows a week that require you to be physically active throughout and it was really taking its toll on my body and on my emotional state. Joe and I barely saw each other and there was a big part of me that thought maybe I could have saved the relationship if I hadn’t taken that last series of Strictly, or if I hadn’t agreed to do Burn the Floor. Seeing each other for one day a week isn’t enough, is it?

  He said to me at the beginning of our relationship how much he admired my work ethic, how I was always wanting to go out and work and not rely on a man to support me. And he could see how careful I was with money and what it meant to be able to support my mum and aunt. He used to tell me how much he liked the fact I didn’t want to be known as ‘Joe’s girlfriend’ and just sponge off him. But that was at the beginning of the relationship and in the end my love of work became a problem. Joe just wanted to go on holiday all the time and drink with his mates as he had achieved all his goals in life; he had been the best of the best and now he could enjoy himself. But there was still a lot that I wanted to achieve as a dancer and as a performer – I never wanted to stop.

  CHAPTER 21

  Health, happiness and heartbreak

  As well as having a damaging effect on my relationship with Joe, the show had quite a negative impact on my health, too. I was getting very dehydrated and I was dancing for two hours non-stop every night – and then there were some days when there was a matinee performance, too. It was a very hard four months and my health suffered as I picked up a kidney infection and had to be on antibiotics.

  The first month was OK. It was tough, but I was coping. In the second month, however, I was struggling to drag myself out of bed. I had to have three cups of coffee first and I thought, ‘This can’t be right.’ I thought I ate quite healthily – I had lots of chicken and eggs – so why did I feel so horrible? As a dancer, if your body fails you haven’t got the tools to do your job any more. I had learnt the hard way about the importance of looking after myself: I ended up in hospital after doing the Strictly tour with Jason.

  I had a few weeks off after that tour when Robin Windsor and I were offered a gig by BBC Worldwide to do a twenty-five-day tour with the Strictly Come Dancing band. It would be us with EastEnders actress Kara Tointon and her partner Artem Chigvintsev. We were all friends and the Strictly band was amazing – it seemed like the perfect job. It was a dream, especially as it was only for twenty-five days and we choreographed the whole tour; it felt very much like our gig.

  But after doing twenty-five days straight, I was tired and although this was quite normal after an intense period of work, it was different to just feeling lethargic. I went to see a play with a friend but I had to come home as I was sweating a lot and felt very unwell. All I wanted to do was lie down and within half an hour of getting home and going to bed I had a raging temperature. I had a lot of pain in my joints and in my back, which I put down to muscle ache. But after a couple of days when my back was still bad and I still had a temperature, I realised it couldn’t be just muscle pain. I would throw up after eating anything – even drinking water – so then I put it down to food poisoning, although my back was still bad and I had a severe headache, too. The doctor said it was because I was dehydrated and it was probably food poisoning I was suffering from.

  I felt awful and I remember Joe and I were due to go to a charity event in Wales the following day. When we got to the hotel, I had to lie down on the bed and so I decided I would go to the event briefly, pose with Joe for the cameras and then come back up to bed. The evening was about to start and I felt like I was going to throw up in front of everyone so I went back to the room and lay on the bed. I couldn’t move and so I called Joe (who had gone downstairs to make an appearance) and I told him he needed to call an ambulance – I was in agony. It was so scary, I didn’t know what was happening to me; I just remember the pain was excruciating.

  The ambulance took me to Cardiff hospital and they discovered I had a terrible kidney infection. I was so dehydrated that they put me on antibiotics and a drip right away and really looked after me. After lots of scans they told me that there was no lasting damage to my kidneys, which was good. When I spoke to my mum about it she said that when I was younger I had suffered with my kidneys, too, and that I would probably be prone to kidney infections. Apparently it is common in athletes and the doctors told me I needed to drink more water than I ever thought I should. I had to drink cranberry juice, too, to get some vitamin C, and give up coffee for a while as it was dehydrating.

  So I spent the night in casualty and was on antibiotics for two weeks afterwards. It was a pain that I woudn’t wish on anyone. I came out of hospital and rested and then Robin reminded me that we were booked to do a show on the Isle of Man. For the first time in my life I thought I would have to cancel a work commitment. I really didn’t think that I would be strong enough to go but then I realised that not only were we dancing, Robin and I had to judge a competition that some children were dancing in, too. And I received an email from the organisers telling me 5,000 people would be in the audience, the local TV was scheduled to be there and the Mayor was coming. I just thought, ‘I can’t let these people down.’

  Joe thought I was completely insane but I didn’t feel like I had any other option. I had been out of hospital for ten days and so I went to the Isle of Man. We judged the children’s dance and then Robin and I performed the cha-cha-cha but because I was so weak, I couldn’t keep up with him and when he spun me round with his usual power I fell to the floor! Normally we are both strong dancers but I just didn’t have the strength and so fell in front of 5,000 people, which was awful! But the organisers were really pleased with how it went and they were so grateful that we had come. I am glad I went as I hate letting people down; it just isn’t me. As long as I work and I am needed, I feel good about myself. My private life has always come second as my love for dancing comes first – it comes before everything.

  So when I started to feel poorly again during the performances of Burn the Floor, I knew I couldn’t live through that sort of pain again and I realised I had to start looking after myself. But I wasn’t about to pull out of a West End show as we were selling tickets with my name and Robin’s name on them. Our pictures were plastered over the London buses and there were countless posters down Shaftesbury Avenue, too. I remember when I first saw my name on a London bus it was so exciting, I took a picture and I got on the bus. It felt so cool!

  With all this excitement came great pressure and I realised I had to start looking after myself. I wasn’t taking enough time to give my body what it needed and, as it was my tool, my way of making a living, I knew I shouldn’t neglect it any longer. I was advised to do a pathology test, which is basically a b
lood test to see if you have any food intolerances. It’s not about food allergies – that is different – food intolerance is about how your body deals with different foods at different times. When my results came back, I was absolutely shocked! Basically everything I ate (pretty much every day), like chicken, eggs, apples and bananas, I was apparently intolerant to. And dairy was also a complete no-no.

  The doctor told me that when I ate those foods my body couldn’t digest them properly and it created a lot of acid inside, which in turn affected my kidneys and liver. The acid targets the weakest areas of your body – which for me were my kidneys and throat. It did all seem to make sense: I would always suffer with a sore throat because my body was full of acid and I was eating foods that weren’t good for my body. It was such a big wake-up call. Once I started eating the right foods according to the chart I was given, I felt so much better straight away. It was incredible the amount of energy I had as well.

  Before, I couldn’t get out of bed without having had a coffee, but now I haven’t had coffee for over a year – I don’t crave it now because my energy levels are much higher. I lost weight, too, and my body was completely reshaped – I felt like a new person. I think when I first saw the chart, because I was feeling so unwell and was so focused on getting myself better, I knew I had to stick with it. But it wasn’t hard and I am quite disciplined: if I know it’s not good for me, I will eliminate it. I have a big weakness for sweets and chocolates, though – but I do try to be good! Cutting out dairy made the biggest difference – I didn’t feel bloated any more, just full of energy. I rarely get sick now. I’m not saying it never happens, but compared to how I was, this is nothing. It is astonishing how your diet can make you feel overall – I did a lot of research into what foods affect your body and how your body reacts to different foods. As a dancer you tend to neglect your body – you push it to its limits and expect it always to do what you want it to – but after so many years, it is likely to have had enough!