Strictly Come Dancing contestant Chris McCausland has been praised for performing a dance imitating his expertise with blindness.
McCausland and his dance associate Dianne Buswell closed Saturday’s present with their couple’s option to Instantaneous Karma! (We All Shine On) by John Lennon.
The efficiency noticed the comic place his fingers over Buswell’s eyes because the room pale to black. The lights got here again up moments later to point out him spinning Buswell round on his shoulders as pyrotechnics flared within the background.
The pair obtained a rating of 33 out of a potential 40 from the judges, with Craig Revel Horwood describing the “poignant blackout second” as “completely spectacular”.
Head choose Shirley Ballas informed McCausland – who’s the BBC programme’s first blind contestant – that he comes out each week “along with your coronary heart in your sleeve, and also you give us 100%”.
It follows a efficiency in 2021 from actor Rose Ayling-Ellis who’s deaf. Ayling-Ellis and her dance associate Giovanni Pernice paid tribute to the deaf group by dancing for a short time in full silence.
It gained the previous Eastenders star a Bafta for the most effective must-see TV second.
McCausland was registered blind after dropping his sight to retinitis pigmentosa in his 20s and 30s.
Earlier than Strictly, he insisted he “cannot dance”, saying: “If anyone out there may be pondering ‘how the hell is he going to do this?’ then relaxation assured that I’m pondering precisely the identical factor.”
Earlier this week, college students on the Royal Nationwide School for the Blind, in Hereford, the place McCausland studied, informed the BBC he was defying expectations.
One pupil mentioned: “Some individuals assume that folks which have visible impairments cannot actually do something or cannot do a lot with their life beside piano tuning.”
“He is doing so nicely now, it is fairly surreal nevertheless it’s actually good, particularly for many who do not know something in regards to the eye,” they added.
One other pupil mentioned it might be “actually cool if somebody who’s visually impaired like us” gained the competitors.
