Great Britain wins the International Invitation Professional Team Match

Alison Gallagher-Hughesblows the whistle on some sporting fun at the Blackpool Festival. Photographs by Ron Self

On the same weekend as Blackpool Football Club became victors of the Championship play-offs, a team match of a different sort was happening in the town’s Winter Gardens. It really was a game of two halves. In addition to its team of current competitors, Great Britain presented a Team B that reminded the dance world of its lineage and treated us to an exhibition of dancing deity.
As soon as Team B – Marcus and Karen Hilton Kenny and Marion Welsh, Sammy Stopford and Barbara McColl and Donny Burns and Gaynor Fairweather – took to the floor, they were met by a standing ovation. And this was just the introduction.

For those that haven’t experienced team match first hand, it goes like this; the four competing nations – Great Britain, Italy, Russia and USA - are introduced to the audience and each present a taster of the entertainment in store. This is often presented with a comic approach or formation demonstration. The teams consist of the nations’ top four professional couples in ballroom and Latin. It takes place early in the festival and provides an opportunity to see the top pros in action and check out their performance for competitions later in the week.
Russia and Italy set out to amuse the crowds with comic takes each presenting a character in drag (very apt given Blackpool’s propensity for drag shows), Russia in the guise of a political youth movement and Italy’s…well just because it could!
The US presented a chequerboard of formation with dancers in black and white costumes complete with extended “pole arms” and theatrical flourish.
Then Britain’s Team A simply strode on to the floor. Dressed in crisp white and silver, they were followed by Team B, a shadow in black. The audience gasped, leapt to their feet, and didn’t take their seats again until each of the former championship couples completed a performance that we never envisaged we would see again.
The years may have passed since these professionals were at the top of their competitive game, but the spark that gave them their magic was still very evident. When the competition started in earnest, it was neck and neck between Britain and Italy, then Russia continued edging forwards with superb performances by its Latin couples. In the end, there was just 0.2 of a mark in it but Britain won back the trophy it mastered for over 50 years and lost to Italy for the first time last year.

But, just when you thought it was all over…the Mayoral Reception at the Tower Ballroom the following night offered us another entertaining take on events. Each team performed a review-style cabaret – its send-ups extending the spirit of fun and friendship that is so intrinsic with the festival. Russia gently mocked each of the team captains by getting them to demonstrate aspects of the previous night’s introduction – horn blowing and Cossack dancing included. The US performed the “Blackpool rap” with its references to a buy-up of the town’s self tanning stocks. Then it was Italy’s turn…after a sickly sweet rendition of “We Are The World”, the team’s four male dancers got down and dirty with a take on the Full Monty. They didn’t have hats to keep on and so wagged their fingers as a refusal to remove their trousers! But as they left the floor, we got the message – the remaining items of clothing had been adapted and “Thank You” was cheekily exposed as a parting gift.
Britain’s finale played on the return of Team B, with the “Bupa helicopter on standby” for its male participants. Adorned in medical gowns and union flag boxers, they were conveyed to the floor with wheelchair, crutches, walking frame and stretcher. The ladies of Team A, cavorting to the sounds of “Sexual Healing” and dressed in sexy nurse attire (the Royal College of Nursing might wag a finger at that!) dutifully revived them and they were all up on their feet for a rendition of YMCA which closed the show.

This year’s Team Match was truly a spectacle and I for one, would have been as sick as a parrot if I’d have missed the sight of those well-honed Italians before the full time whistle was blown.