‘They always say the show must go on,” says Karen Hauer, speaking by video call, sitting on her bed, bleached hair slicked back with lockdown roots on show. “But not this time.” Hauer and fellow Strictly dancer Gorka Marquez were six dates into touring their new show, Firedance, when theatres shut down due to coronavirus.
The pair had just filmed Firedance: Latin Fever, a BBC documentary about the making of the show, when everything came to a halt. “Our hearts dropped,” she says. The documentary is now on iPlayer and the dates have been rescheduled for next spring but the memory still hurts. Being self-employed, all the dancers were suddenly out of work, living off savings. “I’m a saver, luckily,” she says, and as a freelancer she knows that in downtime “things can really go down a rabbit hole” so she set about putting some structure into her days.
Hauer and fellow Strictly star Oti Mabuse set up an online community, Home Festival, streaming dance classes, baking events, a Jenga night, Boris Becker talking tennis – and Hauer and her opera singer partner David Webb laughing and singing their way through “CardioKe” aerobics, with their dogs joining in. The dancers’ warmth proved a major part of the appeal.
Hauer has always turned to dance in challenging times. Born in Venezuela, she moved to the Bronx in New York with her family aged eight, but her dad left soon after they arrived. “So it was just my mom and three kids in a foreign country. It was really hard to understand how someone could leave their family, and to see my mom suffering.”
At nine, Hauer won a scholarship to the Martha Graham school of contemporary dance, where she studied for 10 years. Dancing became an escape, especially when her mother was working and Hauer didn’t want to be home alone (she still goes to sleep with the TV on for company if she’s on her own). “It was hard, as a kid, to know what I was feeling. Dancing gave me a way to express myself and release energy. I didn’t want to let my mom down so I always tried to be the good girl, but I could be emotional through my dancing.”
Discovering salsa dance in New York clubs connected Hauer to her roots and she switched dance styles, competing on the ballroom and Latin circuit for 10 years, but the foundations of her Graham training stayed. “It’s about motive,” she says. “There’s a reason for every movement. You’re not just twirling your arms around. It’s about the truth behind what you’re doing.”
There may be limited time for such truth in a two-minute Strictly tango, but in a theatre show, “it’s deeper than just dance. It’s not just teeth and tits. You’re taking your experiences, your past relationships – that’s what I took from Martha Graham. And all your emotions come from your centre, from your pelvis. You know, when you cry, the first thing you do is you contract, because that’s where you feel the pain.”
Storytelling is what drives Hauer’s dancing, which explains why she’s a huge fan of choreographers Matthew Bourne and Kate Prince. And Firedance is unlike other chat-heavy Strictly spin-offs in that it’s a pure dance show, a story about two rival Latin dancers with – surprise, surprise – a passionate connection, a mashup of Latin styles and modern pop sensibility.
Hauer joined Strictly in 2012. She first came to the UK two years earlier, with the Latin stage show Burn the Floor. “I remember falling in love with London and wanting to live here,” she says. On Burn the Floor, she also fell in love with Kevin Clifton, who joined Strictly as a dancer the year after Hauer. They married in 2015 and split three years later (he’s now with his 2018 Strictly partner, the presenter Stacey Dooley).
Despite the tabloid glare Strictly stars endure, the pair seem to have remained great friends. The pressure of the TV show, she says, contributed to their breakup. “When we were on a tour together the whole time, that was different. It was the beginning of the relationship. Then when you get into a major show, it’s really intense. You never know how you’re going to grow together. It just happened that things didn’t work out. We’re still very close and we have each other’s backs.”
For Hauer, the attention that comes with being a celebrity has been overwhelmingly positive. “There’s incredible support from the fans. I’ve always been welcomed with arms wide open. I feel like I’ve always been a part of this country.” I ask if she knows whether filming for this year’s Strictly is going ahead, but she has only heard the same rumours as the rest of us. Still, she’s getting her body in peak condition so will be ready when the call comes.
“These past weeks have been tough but fitness and dancing have always been my saviour,” says Hauer. “Releasing endorphins, mentally and physically, changes your perspective. It gives you positive energy. And, you know, I’m just trying to stay positive”
Firedance: Latin Fever is on BBC iPlayer. Tickets for the 2021 Firedance tour go on sale on 19 June.
