The TV adaptation of Dolly Alderton’s memoir depicts the triumph of female friendship in its characters’ dazzling and defiant urge to make the world their dancefloor
The TV adaptation of Everything I Know About Love, Dolly Alderton’s memoir chronicling her roaring 20s in London’s Camden, is awash with drinking and dating, youthful misdemeanour and lots of messy charm. But unexpectedly it is also joyfully full of dancing. Every episode sees Maggie (Emma Appleton, the Alderton character) and her three housemates rocking dancefloors, bouncing round the kitchen table, doing a conga in the hallway; as natural to them as laughing, hugging and swigging wine. Dancing is a way they communicate with each other, a way they bond and celebrate, daily.
There’s even a storyline based around contemporary dance, a rare sight in mainstream telly. Wannabe dancer Amara has been cut at countless auditions and gives up on her dream, taking a corporate job instead. She embodies Alderton’s struggle between pursuing a life that’s exciting, authentic or sensibly “adult”. But there’s more to Amara’s story. She’s black, and lists the subtle, and less subtle, tripwires that have crossed her path: directors who assume she’s a street dancer because of her colour; the teacher continually telling her to tuck her bum in (“That’s just my body”) who then tells her curtly she won’t have a career in the industry. Alderton must know some dancers because this rings very true (though the show is set in 2012 and there has been an awareness shift in the industry since then).
