Arlene Phillips

Phillips was born in 1943 and grew up in Prestwich, Lancashire, England. She is Jewish and has a brother, Ian and a sister, Karen. She attended Broughton Preparatory School, Cheetham Hill, Manchester; Beaver Road Primary School, Didsbury; and Manchester Central High School for Girls after passing the eleven plus exam. When Phillips was 15, her mother, who had been suffering from leukaemia, died aged 43. Her father, who had been a barber with his own shop, died of Alzheimer's at the age of 89.

Phillips originally wanted to be a ballet dancer and began dance classes at the age of three, studying ballet and tap dance at the Muriel Tweedy School in Manchester after leaving school at 16. Her mother had always expressed a desire to dance, which inspired Phillips into pursuing dance professionally.

Phillips is internationally renowned as a choreographer and director of West End and Broadway musicals, but has many other professional credits.

In her mid-teens, Phillips moved to London where she has lived ever since. Strongly influenced by American Modern Jazz dance which was becoming popular in London at that time, she began developing her own style of jazz dance and began teaching her style in a number of prominent London dance studios, first at The Dance Centre and later at Pineapple Dance Studios in Covent Garden, and the Italia Conti Stage School. She quickly established herself as a successful teacher and choreographer.

Phillips choreographed the 1982 film, Annie, and the Duran Duran song The Wild Boys, named Best British Video at the 1985 BRIT Awards. In the summer of 1996, she was stage director on the opening run of Michael Flatley's Irish dance show, Lord of the Dance at Dublin's Point Theatre.

Internationally, Phillips is most noted as a jazz and musical theatre choreographer, having worked on some of the biggest-selling musicals in West End and Broadway theatre, and a number of successful films. She is an Olivier Award nominee.

Phillips choreographed the 2002 Commonwealth Games opening and closing ceremonies alongside fellow Mancunian, David Zolkwer.[2]

From 2004 to 2009, she was a judge on the BBC One show Strictly Come Dancing, and commented on the acts in Eurovision: Your Country Needs You for the BBC in 2009. In 2008, she created, produced, and choreographed the ITV television serial Britannia High. She was also the creative mind behind hit BBC shows DanceX and Strictly Dance Fever.

Following Phillips's appearance on Your Country Needs You, she choreographed the performance of the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest 2009.[3] She went on to choreograph Engelbert Humperdinck's performance of the UK entry in the 2012 contest in Baku.[4]

In March 2013, Arlene appeared on Let's Dance For Comic Relief in the Dance Judge Panel with Greg James and Lee Mack.[5]

In Britain, Phillips first became a household name as the director and choreographer of Hot Gossip, a British dance troupe which she formed in 1974, using students she was teaching at the time. Hot Gossip spent two years performing in a London night club where Phillips and her manager developed the group's dance act.

The troupe were spotted by the British television director, David Mallet who invited Phillips to make Hot Gossip a regular feature of The Kenny Everett Show, which he directed for Thames Television on ITV, first being aired in 1978. It was during this time that Hot Gossip made their only hit record, backing Sarah Brightman on "I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper", a disco song which reached number 6 in the British music chart. Brightman went on to achieve international fame as a soprano vocalist.

Hot Gossip were noted for the risqué nature of their costumes and highly rated dance routines. They continued to work into the early 1980s, with their own television special on the newly formed public service broadcaster, Channel 4, The Very Hot Gossip Show.

• The Wizard of Oz, 2011 London production
• Flashdance[6]
• The Sound of Music, 2006 London revival and 2008 Canadian production
• Starlight Express
• Grease
• Saturday Night Fever
• We Will Rock You
• Fire Angel
• Matador
• Time
• A Clockwork Orange, for the Royal Shakespeare Company

Phillips was a member of the judging panel for the successful BBC television series Strictly Come Dancing, an original entertainment programme which has been running in the UK since 2004, and whose format has subsequently been licensed to broadcasters overseas.

In the show, celebrities are given intensive training in ballroom and latin dance routines, being partnered by an experienced professional dancer. They perform new routines each week for a live television audience, and each week a celebrity is eliminated until the series winner is decided. The panel of judges (Phillips, Len Goodman, Craig Revel Horwood, Bruno Tonioli) score the dance performances, and their scores are then combined with the results of a public televote to decide which two couples gave the weakest performance each week. These two couples then dance again, before the judges decide who should leave the competition.

Phillips was asked to be a judge for the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) version of the show, Dancing with the Stars, but decided that her loyalties lay with the British version.

In 2005 and 2006, Phillips was a judge for the spin-off series Strictly Dance Fever, which was also created by the BBC. The show searched for dancers to join the chorus of a West End musical. Later in 2007, she created and judged another BBC dance series, DanceX, a show formed to find a new commercial dance act. After the initial audition process, the competitors were split into two troupes of dancers, with Phillips mentoring one troupe and the other being mentored by her fellow Strictly Come Dancing judge Bruno Tonioli. The two troupes competed live on television each week, with Tonioli's troupe being the eventual winners.

In October 2009, Phillips appeared on the first episode of the 38th series of the satirical show Have I Got News for You. Between April and July 2010, Phillips made nine guest panellist appearances on ITV's flagship show Loose Women. In the autumn of 2010, Phillips introduced a range of makeup in association with cosmetics brand VIE at home.

Phillips was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2001 Birthday Honours and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to dance and charity.[9]

Phillips and her partner, Angus Ion, have been together since 1985. She met Ion, a set designer, on the set of the music video for the Freddie Mercury song "I Was Born to Love You".

In 2010, Phillips wrote a series of children's fiction books. Alana Dancing Star is a series of six books, in which the title character explores different genres of dance. The series covers ballroom dance, samba, hip-hop, Bollywood, Broadway, and tango. In summer 2011, one of the books, Viennese Waltz, was selected to be part of Richard and Judy's Summer Children's Reading List.

• Monty Python's The Meaning of Life – Dir. Terry Jones
• Legend – Dir. Ridley Scott
• It Couldn't Happen Here – Dir. Jack Bond – Choreographer

• Annie – Dir. John Huston
• White Hunter Black Heart – Dir. Clint Eastwood
• Salome's Last Dance – Dir. Ken Russell
• Can't Stop the Music – Dir. Nancy Walker
• The Wind in the Willows – Dir. Terry Jones
• Escape to Athena – Director George P. Cosmatos, 1979
• The Fan – Starring Lauren Bacall
• Private Dancer music video for Tina Turner – Choreographer

• Article from The Mirror newspaper
• Biography from the official website for the Saturday Night Fever musical
• Arlene Phillips at the Internet Broadway Database
• Arlene Phillips at IMDb