Oti Mabuse

I’ve made storylines through dance to complement the music. It’s all about enhancing the singing and acting. It’s been an amazing learning curve for me.

I'm smiling every single day because every opportunity I've been given feels like a baby in Disneyland, I'm constantly hoping to move on to the next job.

The most important thing any person can focus on, whether in a first audition or a first job, is to be the best you can be. The rest will take care of itself.

Although I won many titles on the competition circuit, my first professional audition was in 2015 for the popular German version of 'Strictly Come Dancing', called 'Let’s Dance'."

When you are different, that can lead to judges not marking you right because they think you look ‘odd’ - and that’s in any competition."

I had been dancing in competitions in South Africa since the age of four, before going on to compete internationally.

I have different styles of shoe for different dances and I love sneakers, flats, platforms, heels, boots. Especially my thigh-high black leather boots from Kurt Geiger.

I wouldn't do anything I don't enjoy.

I was born and raised in Pretoria. Nobody ever really talked about Santa because the whole concept just didn’t make sense to us. Think about what South Africa looks like: I mean, we don’t even have any chimneys for him to come down!"

I don’t do anything I’m not going to enjoy.

The goal was for me to become a civil engineer. But one day I really felt that it was important for me to do what I really loved. I was really good at engineering, but I didn’t have a passion for it, so going to work was something I had to do, not something that I really wanted to do."

My first passion was to create for young girls the idea that you have to be brave and courageous, it's not easy taking big steps and saying, 'I'm going to be a professional dancer'.