Stricly Come Dancing star AJ Pritchard and his brother on new Moulin Rouge-inspired show
Dancing brothers AJ and Curtis Pritchard clearly enjoy a lot of banter as well as friendly rivalry – but above all they have each other’s backs and they are about to go on tour together with Moulin Rouge tribute show Come What May.
"Picture Strictly Come Dancing, picture all the big group numbers and big lifts well that’s what’s going to be one there," says Curtis, 28, of Come What May. “Including the Can Can, live bands and singing – not from AJ so don’t worry about that.
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Hide Ad"Singing is not my forte – I can do pretty much everything else but singing happens to be the one thing that’s my achilles heel. I’ll let the professional do that,” says AJ (Alex Joseph) who is a year older than his brother.


"It’s good fun. We know each other inside out. We are brothers, we’ve grown up together, we’ve dene everything from building dens in the garden to doing dance competitions together to doing different tour to doing panto every year together.
"We know how we both work and we know how we work on stage and its very good because we bring polar opposites to the stage. we are both very talented in what we do but we both bring different elements.
"We always have each others back but there is always that little bit of sibling rivalry on stage – who can get the biggest cheer. It’s good fun,” says Curtis.
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Hide AdTalking to the brothers it seems that have quite different ideas about the show – but it seems to work.


“My strength is keeping it alive and on schedule – I’m a quite OCD, not controlling, but I like it to be very uniform and stay on track. It’s a tour across the whole of the UK so I don’t want it to stray from what it was in show number one to the final show in Folkstone,” says AJ.
“I like to get the audience going wild – it’s a live show yes you have the skeleton of the show you want to do but it is a different audience every night and they react differently and laugh at different things – you have to find what works for that particular audience and that’s what I love love to do," says Curtis.
Although it is a tribute to Moulin Rouge and other musicals, Come What May very much aims to involve the audience.
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Hide Ad“We want to completely break down that fourth wall,” says AJ. “We talk to the audience because that’s what we believe in as live performers.
"It has all the aspects of a life show but with our personalities. It is very much interactive and I personally think its bring that extra elements that is sometimes missing when you go to watch a traditional musical.”
Both brothers are no strangers to live performing having made their names on live TV – AJ with four series of Strictly Come Dancing and Curtis on Irelands Dancing with the Stars and Love Island and then both appearing in many other reality TV shows from Celebrity Get Me Out of Here to Celebs Go Dating.
But they say doing a live theatre tour is very different to live television.
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Hide Ad"You can record live TV and watch it again the thing with the live tour is that unless you go to that particular show on that particular day you won’t see what’s happened – whether something has gone right or wrong. And that’s what I love about a show like that it is so personal to each individual audience,” says Curtis.
“We have done a lot of TV shows, but it is nice that we come from a place where we have a profession first,” says AJ.
“Its nice our TV life started through the thing we trained to be professionally,” adds his brother. "Then all these other opportunities came about. We already had a grounding in TV and made me not worry about who or what I was on TV – I didn’t have to over think it.”
Although the boys parents had a dance school – Pritchard’s Dance and Fitness Academy – attached their Cheshire home, they were not keen for their sons to become dancers.
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Hide Ad"Far from it,” says Curtis. “Mum and dad never wanted us to dance, they wanted us to do something else, ideally extreme sports.”
Then, at the ages of 11 an 12, an opportunity came for them to appear on a live television programme for which they had to dance.
"It was diabolical, we were rubbish,” say Curtis. “Thank god it never got shown on TV. But that got us into the dancing which continued from then.”
In 2013, AJ and his professional dance partner Hewitt auditioned for Britain's Got Talent; the pair eventually reached the live semi-finals.
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Hide AdThree years later he signed up as a professional dancer for the 14th series of Strictly Come Dancing A year after AJ joined Strictly Curtis was announced as one of the professional dancers for the first series of Ireland's version, Dancing with the Stars, where he stayed for three years.
Once they realised what they wanted to achieve, AJ says their school peers were very accepting of the dancing brother.
"We were very strong minded and I think that helped. I think the respect came from the fact we were representing our country in Worlds and Europeans. We were also very good at rugby, football and basketball so it wasn’t like we were going to back down if someone wasn’t very nice to us."
Being just a year apart at school they had each other’s backs and that doesn’t seem to have changed since they have grown up and left school.
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Hide AdIn 2018, Curtis and AJ, along with two others, were attacked in an "unprovoked assault" on a night out in Nantwich.
Curtis needed an emergency operation to his knee and was unable to appear on Dancing with the Stars. A 20-year-old man was arrested and released.
During the incident both brothers tried to protect each other - both risking their dancing careers. This bond is clear when we speak.
Under the friendly banter is a passionate connection. They might be able to take the micky out of each other but woe betide anyone else who tries to do it.
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Hide Ad“We are always there for each other,” says Curtis. They used to share a flat in London but Curtis move out into his own place recently but is still just around the corner from his older brother.
“It was great living together, but living together, working together, being brothers – well put it this was he nearly got thrown off the balcony,” add Curtis.
But it is not all dancing and reality TV for the brothers. A few months ago they launched a financial investment business – an idea they have been working on for a couple of years.
“I’ve always been very dyslexic but love numbers – numbers have always been my safe space,” says AJ.
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Hide Ad“I’ve always invested my money from my first pay cheque on Strictly. I feel it’s very important in the UK that the education side is built up to help people - in schools it just isn’t there.
"So we have built a financial investment app Fint that allows people to invest on a monthly basis and we are building a full education suite on the back of that. It’s something we believe in we don’t want people to get ripped off.”
After Come What May the brothers are doing pantomine and other TV work is in the pipeline. However they both say despite its troubles they would jump at the chance of doing Strictly together.
"Strictly is a British institution and it’s the build up to Christmas – without Strictly how to we know its Chirstmas,” says AJ.
Come What May will be at Sheffield City Hall on September 26 and York Barbican September comewhatmayshow.com.
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