This winter may be looking bleak – outside your window; inside your wallet; on your newsfeed – but here to sashay into that greyish picture with energy, vivaciousness and that infectious laugh is our December issue cover star.
Sure, she’s not burning up the floor every week on the Strictly this year. But even free from its notoriously gruelling Autumn/Winter training schedule, Oti Mabuse is grafting towards her goals.
You’ll likely have caught her bringing personality and her own brand of kind-yet-tough feedback to the judging panels of shows like The Masked Dancer and Dancing on Ice.
As well as running the Oti Mabuse Dance School in north London (for which our cover star has big, wellness offering-related expansion pans) alongside her husband – fellow dancer Marius Iepure – the couple also have a property development business plus various other projects on the boil.
‘For so long, the focus has been really to support and help my career. I’m really grateful to have a supportive husband and now, for me, it’s time to return that, to support him and help him,’ Oti says.
‘He’s going to be travelling all over the world judging, so now I need to take on the [dance] school and the other businesses and head those things up.’
While it sounds like a lot, Oti thrives on the busy-ness of it – and she’s even enjoying workplace comms.
‘I love being like, “We need a meeting now!”,’ she laughs. ‘It also keeps me on my toes because I need to get my things together and be really focused. I’m leading teams and people really want to work, and I’m pushing them and motivating them.’
Andrew Woffinden
Increased familiarity with video calls to check on the status of various projects isn’t the only way that Oti’s life is becoming a little more, er, knowable.
Since her daily work has pivoted from a lot of dancing to, well, a lot of sitting – be it on the aforementioned video calls or for her various judging gigs – she’s had to completely renegotiate the way she works out.
‘I haven’t been dancing, right? My body has completely taken on a new shape. And you’re just like, “Oh my gosh, what is this? Is this turning 30?!” My body has completely changed from what I looked like, two, three years ago,’ she explains. (And – let’s be absolutely clear – she’s still every inch goddess-like.)
‘My body just doesn’t burn as fast as it used to. I was going from dancing – literally running, jumping, being fit all the time – to sitting behind a desk or [sitting down when I’m] doing interviews. So I’ve learned that I need to make time for the physical aspects.’
Oti loves the specific brand of fast-and-furious-yet-super-friendly interval training on offer at her local west London branch of F45, along with regular reformer Pilates sessions and long walks with her dog.
While our cover star is embracing her new businesswoman era, you better believe that making the shift – and leaving everyone’s favourite shiny-floored entertainment show – didn’t come easily.
Andrew Woffinden
‘I’m changing and growing in a world that very much depends [not only] on how well you do your job but whether people connect to you, right?’ she says, of the great – and sometimes brutal – popularity contest required of someone working in the entertainment industry.
‘I’ve been under this incredible umbrella for seven years, where people know on Saturday night you bring them joy, and you make them smile,’ she says, of her time on Strictly. ‘And when a lot of things in your business are based off that [feeling], it was really, really scary.’
‘I was asking myself, “Am I ready? Am I fit enough to do this? Can I handle it?”,’ but then – put simply – our cover star remembered just who she is. ‘I come from South Africa, you know? I left a whole continent. I’ve always been up for a challenge.’
A huge, emphatic yes to that. For the full interview – and more of Oti’s magic – pick up the December issue of Women’s Health, out now.
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