Strictly's Chris McCausland praised for 'poignant' dance imitating blindness

Strictly Come Dancing contestant Chris McCausland has been praised for performing a dance imitating his experience with blindness.

McCausland and his dance partner Dianne Buswell closed Saturday's show with their couple's choice to Instant Karma! (We All Shine On) by John Lennon.

The performance saw the comedian place his hands over Buswell's eyes as the room faded to black. The lights came back up moments later to show him spinning Buswell around on his shoulders as pyrotechnics flared in the background.

The pair received a score of 33 out of a possible 40 from the judges, with Craig Revel Horwood describing the "poignant blackout moment" as "absolutely spectacular".

Head judge Shirley Ballas told McCausland - who is the BBC programme's first blind contestant - that he comes out every week "with your heart on your sleeve, and you give us 100%".

In Sunday's edition of Strictly, McCausland said the feedback from people had been "amazing and on social media everyone really loved what we did".

He said about the dance: “It was nice to be able to smile and enjoy ourselves, have some lifts in it, and a little bit of wow-factor."

Shaun Hayward, a singer and dancer who is blind, has been keeping track of McCausland’s progress on the show via the detailed audio captions that are available with the broadcast.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast on Sunday, he praised Buswell for coaching McCausland "brilliantly".

"It's not only doing that with someone with sight loss, it's that individual - how do they think, how do they work - do they work in numbers, do they work in patterns?"

In his own dancing, Hayward says he is a patterns person, often playing out the routine with his hands on a table to grasp the broader picture of movement.

"But, it's like anything - the more you do it, you're connecting the dots," he said.

McCausland's dance on Saturday night followed a performance in 2021 from actor Rose Ayling-Ellis who is deaf. Ayling-Ellis and her dance partner Giovanni Pernice paid tribute to the deaf community by dancing for a short while in complete silence.

It won the former Eastenders star a Bafta for the best must-see TV moment.

McCausland was registered blind after losing his sight to retinitis pigmentosa in his 20s and 30s.

McCausland is the BBC programme's first blind contestant

Before Strictly, he insisted he "can't dance", saying: "If anybody out there is thinking 'how the hell is he going to do that?' then rest assured that I am thinking exactly the same thing."

Earlier this week, students at the Royal National College for the Blind, in Hereford, where McCausland studied, told the BBC he was defying expectations.

One student said: "Some people think that people that have visual impairments can't really do anything or can't do much with their life beside piano tuning."

"He's doing so well now, it's quite surreal but it's really good, especially for those who don't know anything about the eye," they added.

Another student said it would be "really cool if someone who is visually impaired like us" won the competition.