Tuesday Topic, with Christine Rutter

AS a male ballet dancer, Damian Jackson is bound to get some stick.

Despite following in the footsteps hugely successful stars such as Wayne Sleep and Rudolph Nureyev, Damian's career in tights is still steeped in stereotypes.

With such strength, skill and commitment needed to actually perform as a dancer, it is difficult to see why the art form - which emerged from the dances of courtiers, tumblers and country folk - attained such a cissy image.

But Damian is challenging the stale attitudes.

"When I tell some people I'm a dancer, they kind of look at you funnily and some call you a 'poof.'

"Their attitude always seems to change when I tell them I'm earning £400 a week," said Damian, currently starring in Saturday Night Fever: The Musical at the London Palladium.

Surprisingly, during his school years, when you would expect Damian to have fallen victim to bullies because of his interest in dancing, he was left alone.

"I actually never got picked on, even though I used to sing and dance in the school productions," revealed the former Darwen Vale High School pupil, who now lives Leyton, London.

The hugely talented dancer is a real success story for East Lancashire.

He has tiptoed his way to stardom since leaving the Christine Clarkson School of Dance and Performers in Leyland as a qualified teacher of ballet, tap and modern dance. And today, almost everyone at some time will have seen Damian's face without realising it.

He has rubbed shoulders with the likes of Cilla Black and Matthew Kelly as he boogied and gyrated as a feature dancer on hit TV shows Surprise, Surprise and Stars In Their Eyes and was also cast as a soldier in Goodnight Sweetheart.

He has also thrilled theatre-goers in headline shows such as Cats and Grease.

He started his career on the crest of a wave - literally.

Damian clinched a much sought-after job on the ocean waves as a principal dancer for a cruise liner.

Visiting such far-flung places as Alaska and the Caribbean islands on his days off, many would think it was money for old rope.

But Damian said: "The shows were very glamorous.

"They were quite a spectacle to watch and took a lot of hard work.

"It was very challenging."

But he admitted: "It was a great life.

"I was very privileged, really. I got to visit gorgeous places and get paid to do it."

His success is all the more stirring when you realise he might never have discovered a career in dance.

"I wasn't interested in dancing at all until I started to go with my mum to pick up my sister Ashley from dance class," he said. "One day I just joined in and loved it."

Damian was five at the time.

"Now 23, he was thrilled to be picked as part of the original cast for Saturday Night Fever, which is set to run for a year

"The production is a lot like the film and some scenes are very dramatic and breathtaking."

"There is a lot of lifting in the show," he said. It is not about brute strength.

"The girl dancers lift themselves.

"It is about technique."

Damian plays the part of drug dealer Chico.

It is his first major part for which he has been undergoing gruelling rehearsals for the last three months.

"It is hard but it is brilliant," he said.

"I really enjoy this sort of life. "There is no way I could work nine to five in an office."

Yet the contemporary dancer's schedule is regularly more taxing than that of the average worker, rehearsing for hours on end, six days a week, and churning out two fast-moving shows a day.

"I know when a production is running I might not put in as many hours as an office worker but when you're on stage you give it your all," said Damian, who grew up on Firtrees Drive, Holly Tree Village, Blackburn.

He loves television work for "putting you on the spot" and theatre for its energy but he sees his future in choreography.

He once took over as choreographer for the pantomime Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs when the original man for the job was sacked.

"I was just thrown into the job but I loved it, cleaning up the dances and managing the routines," he said.

"I would like to do this in the future."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.