Quick Steph
From an early age and as far back as she can remember, Stephanie wanted to be a dancer after seeing a friend called Shanty perform a ballet routine on stage..."I had never seen a ballerina before then and Shanty, who looked a lot like me at the time with this mass of long hair, looked so graceful and pretty and appeared to be weightless floating around the stage! I knew right then that ballet was something special but never had the chance or the brains to ask anyone if I could be one!"...Stephanie was also a regular viewer of Mini Pops a 70's version of Top Of The Pops where stage school kids would impersonate pop stars..."I remember seeing another girl once who looked exactly like me! She was singing and dancing and I knew I could do the same...I wanted so much to be on that programme and I used to always be making up dance routines to misuc for my friends and for school plays and I was only seven at the time!"
High Fidelity
Back in the day when leg warmers first found their fashion, Stephanie used to dress up at home wearing her favourite pair of sunglasses..."I used to just stand there posing as if I was already a pop star! I genuinally thought the programme FAME was just something on the TV! I would have loved to have gone to stage school back then! If oly I'd have known! Its a shams as I bet would have hit Broadway by now if I had of done!"...Stephanie tells me how she used to dance and write music at home without tuitition and basically taught herself what she knows!..."I used to sit there for hours on my keyboards playing and teaching myself different songs and making up dance routines to my favourite songs!"
Can Can
Stephanie admitted to having a funny dance routine that she would do every time she heard her favourite theme tune on the TV..."As soon as I heard the first note to the Dallas programme I would jump off the sofa or from wherever I was at the time and begin kicking my legs high up in the air doing a can-can kind of dance! Because I used to be double jointed I could kick really high and once I kicked my legs up so high that I knocked myself out! I had kicked myelf in the nose and I collapsed!" Lucky not to have broken anything, though every week guaranteed Stephanie usually broke something as she was quite accident prone! Stephanie took her music and dancing to school where she was noticed at an early age and realised part of her dream to sing and dance there..."I was always being picked out to be lead in the school plays and of course I had the oppertunity to make up the dance routines and songs. It was an amazing feeling to sing and dance but although I was brave enough to act alone, I never sang or danced alone! I was incredibly shy about that for some unknown reason!".Stephanie says how her shyness can still affect her now and advises anyone who suffers from it or even stage fright to just get out there and do it as it takes all sorts of various ablilites and talents to make a show happen!
Podiums
Stephanie went on to become a club dancer later on in life and has also danced at various gigs and in a few music videos....Though untrained initially Stephanie has a good style and natural technique with various forms of dance but never graded unlike her sister Kirsty who trained with the Royal School of Ballet...Instead of dance, at a younger age Stephanie got picked out to become a gymnast and began grading for the BAGA awards and appeared on The South Bank Show with a gymnastic piece as a child...Being the fact that Stephanie was double jointed she found gymnastics easy and fun but due to her parents seperation and move her career took a sudden downfall...Her good friend Stephen Tell went on to become British Gymnast Champion....
Stephanie is still just about able to manage the box splits (Ouch! The Ed) aswell as being able to dance a little on ballet points.