The Chronicle 682

20 ST EDWARD’S CHRONICLE

Dennis Victory What do you do at Teddies and how long have you worked here? I’ve been here for 10 years. I started off just teaching breakdancing on Monday evenings as it was different from the hip-hop that was being done at the time. It was so successful that Lisa Elkins (Head of Dance) and I decided to introduce a few more styles and I started teaching funk fusion which is a mixture of street, hip-hop and breakdance. It’s been hugely popular and I now teach at Teddies three days a week, teaching breakdance, funk fusion and acrobatics. Tell us a bit about your training and career. I started off doing talent competitions at the age of six, went to stage school at eight, started performing at nine and was in the West End by the time I was 12, doing shows like Bugsy Malone and working at the National Theatre. I did my first TV series when I was 15 and my first commercial at 18. I juggled both TV and theatre over the next two decades. I spent a lot of my 20s doing TV work and a lot of my 30s on the West End. About 12 years ago I bumped into Lisa, who I went to stage school with, when I was doing a panto in Windsor. We got talking and I ended up here. What do you enjoy about choreographing and teaching Dance at Teddies? I teach both at Teddies and at a performing arts school. The mentality at a performing arts school is so pressurised, it’s all about career as a performer, whereas I love working at Teddies as the pupils mainly dance for the sheer joy of it. The pupils here are so supportive of each other and the shows have just been brilliant, they’ve grown now to the extent that they are now unbeatable year after year - we just try to do something new each time. What makes Dance so popular at Teddies? It’s a great release of energy and stress. I’ve seen kids come out of mock exams and come in and scream ‘Let’s do a warm up!’ and want to crack on with choreography. Which dancers inspire you? When I was young I wanted to tap like Sammy Davis Jnr and I enjoyed picking up choreography from Gene Kelly. Kelly is a left-handed choreographer which made it easy to copy things over onto the right. My first talent shows when I was six were doing impressions of Michael Jackson who has remained one of my inspirations. Best advice about dance and performance that you’ve ever been given? Bernie Clifton once said to me, ‘Never read reviews! It’s just someone else’s opinion’. Now so much of media is online I think it’s even more important. There are so many anonymous trolls and uninformed people spreading unpleasantness which is best ignored.