Our Summer of Dancing

‘Our Dancing Town’ BBC 2 Tuesday 9pm

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As with a lot of things these days, it started with an email ….. “We’ve been advised to get in touch with you about …. We’ve visited your shop and think it’s wonderful …… We’d be delighted if you’d talk to us about getting involved with ….. “  You know the sort of thing:  not a lot of information imparted but just enough to set the imagination off.

The email, to which we said “Why thank you, please tell us more” was swiftly followed up with a phone call that was still quite vague but intriguing enough for us to move on to the inevitable meeting.  And it was then that we found out about the exciting plans for Skipton and the programme that, according to many Twitter users, has taken Tuesday nights on BBC 2 by storm after just one episode.

‘Our Dancing Town’ is the BBC’s culmination of a Summer spent in this glorious county we call home:  as well as capturing Skipton in all its glory, the crew also visited Barnsley (as seen on last week’s show), Huddersfield and York; seeking out characters, community champions and dancers of all ages and abilities. 

At our meeting they told us how people they’d already filmed kept mentioning ‘the great farm shop on the outskirts of town’, how it had become ‘a big part of the community’ and that many people believed it had helped ‘bring new visitors to the High Street’.  They felt they couldn’t do a programme on this fair town without including us somehow and would we like to be part of, what they hoped would be, a really heart-warming piece of feel-good, dark night, winter warmer television?

Needless to say, we jumped at the chance and before we could fasten our dancing shoes the camera crew was on site and we were being taken through our paces by choreographer/presenter, Steve Elias.  It’s hard to say how many of us actually possess ‘Twinkle Toes’ but we certainly gave it a good go:  Tony and his team of eager butchers embraced the ‘cool’ choreography and strutted their stuff with aplomb, while the ladies, gathered from various areas of the shop and including our owner, Victoria, relished the quick Charleston step and “swing your handbags” break.  We’re not sure how many of these are official dance terms but they helped us get the hang of it!  You can judge for yourselves with the attached covert video footage of one of the practice sessions!

With the dancing done Victoria gave Steve (and the crew) a tour of the shop.  As I write, the Skipton programme has not been aired so who knows how much will have been revealed about our fabulous Yorkshire suppliers and the work we do to make sure our customers have a fulfilling shopping experience.  We hope some of our (not so secret) secrets have been shared with the viewers:  there is certainly more to Keelham than the many pairs of ‘left feet’ we will undoubtedly have revealed in rehearsal footage!

And as for the final dance?  That was a fun day, despite the weather!  In turns gloriously sunny and ridiculously wet, it felt like we were doing the ‘hokey cokey’ the number of times we were ‘In, out! In out!’ (of the town hall) and then shaking it all about on the High Street.  Eventually the production team got the shot they were after and the fruits of all our labours will be laid bare for all to see on Tuesday night.  Be kind if you fancy commenting on our prowess;  we’re shopkeepers, not dancers and keep an eye out later in the series for the twist in the tale.