Interview: Blaze Dancers Tommy Franzen and Carrie-Anne Ingrouille

Interview: Blaze Dancers Tommy Franzen and Carrie-Anne Ingrouille

23 March, 2010
by: Naima Khan

So You Think You Can Dance finalist Tommy Franzen and Carrie-Anne Ingrouille of the Blaze cast talk to Naima Khan about the international troupe and the amazing choreographers in their hit West End show.

There were a few celebrities in the audience at your opening night, including Arlene Phillips, Louise Redknapp and Sisco Gomez. Does that ever put you off?

CA:It's exciting to have them there.

T: Last night was really good. It felt like there was such a good vibe going on. I had a lot of fun, all of us did.

CA:You're just playing to a different kind of audience. What matters most is that the audience is enjoying it, not who the audience are. As long as you get a good response, it doesn't matter who's watching. The energy that they give back to you is incredible. When you see the look on people's faces, or you get that standing ovation, when people are just uncontrollable with it, it's like getting a promotion at work, when the audience give you a positive reaction, you know you've done your job properly, you know somebody's felt something.
 
T: We're taking the audience on a journey. It doesn't have to be a story; it can be, but just having them watch you do your thing, you're taking them with you.

Blaze is a high budget show in a West End Theatre. How far is this from where you expected to be when you started out? Or did you set out to achieve something like this?

CA: I don't know if you can ever know what to expect. Especially with something like hip hop: it just evolves so quickly that anything could be the next thing. It's one of those genres that is constantly changing. I mean ballet changes to a certain degree, contemporary got a lot of freedom to change but I think hip hop, because it crosses so much with the popular culture, it really can go anywhere. When you're starting out the one thing you want is for it to become more mainstream so you have the chance to do more of it. But as for how it becomes mainstream it's really open because it changes so much.

Blaze feature dancers from all over the world. How has the variation in the group affected what's on stage?

T: It's always really interesting to work with people from different backgrounds because everyone learnt different things from different sources. If you've already trained together you've got less to share in a way, and we really inspire each other because everyone's so different.

CA: When it comes to the international cast, what comes across is the intense passion they have – it's just that natural passion there. Sometimes when you're English, you're a little bit more reserved, but the international dancers have a more visible passion and it affects us. We're surrounded – we've got French, Portuguese, Tommy's Swedish, some of the breakers and DJs from the USA so you've got so many mixes of people

You spent some time with mesmerising choreographers Mike Song, Kenny Wormald and Lyle Beniga – what was it like working with them?

CA + T: Amazing!

CA: They're incredible, their vision and their enthusiasm and everything is just great. We're lucky in London because we've got some fantastic choreographers here as well, but there was something extra special about getting some from LA so we had the mixture of the two. Not one of the choreographers are similar.

T: The effect of having someone from the US is that it makes the show look different to anything else that's here. It makes us stand out. This has pretty much been a dream job! We learnt so much – all the styles were so alien to us. It was really difficult and we had to adapt – I haven't moved in that way before.

How much of what we see is set and how much is spontaneous?

T: 98% is set probably. No, there are a few moments actually where we get to just freestyle and we can mix it up however we want to depending on how we feel on the day.

CA: Everyone's such an individual character in the show. You're never really watching clones of people. We are doing the same choreography, but everyone's got an individual feel for it.

T: Yeah and at the moment I think in UK hip hop dance theatre or in hip hop dance groups, it's quite a thing for everyone to look the same, wear the same costume. There's been quite a lot of that in the past and I think this breaks that up quite nicely. Everyone can be really tight but everyone is so individual. 

Blaze runs at Peacock Theatre until 28th March

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Naima Khan