Special Guest Judge:
Aicha McKenzie

Aicha Mckenzie became the first black Junior British Gymastics Champion at the age of 11. From then she went on to represent Great Britain and England in all the major international Rhythmic gymnastics events across
the World culminating in her winning 3 medals at the Commonwealth Games in 1994. At the same time Aicha was studying for A-levels.

After her retirement from gymnastics she then explored her skills in dancing and that led her to her first professional dancing job for Take That at the MTV Awards in Berlin. Once she had danced on that amazing stage Aicha had the fever and went on to make herself a career in dancing and modelling, working with names such as Ricky Martin, The Backstreet Boys, Robbie Willams and Usher. As a model she appeared in various magazines such as Marie Clare and Afro hair and Beauty and walked the catwalks for Mitiko Koshino and Julien Macdonald.

This was all very exciting for Aicha but she still felt that she wanted to do more and that acting would be the way forward for her. She took time off from the dancing world and went to study. During her time at Drama school she worked at a top dance agency in London and found that she had skills off stage and behind the scenes as well. By chance a client called the agency wanting a choreographer to write a concept immediately and so Aicha took the challenge on. She won the account and started choreographing shows for Levis. This led to more and more offers of work for her services as a fashion show choreographer and she started to work with high fashion designers and also street and sportswear designers such as Nike.

Before she knew it Aicha had become well known in her field and
had developed a way to incorporate dance with fashion on all levels. This ability led to calls from music artists who wanted to create a stage performance that had her particular style and so she started to create conceptual ideas for singers like Kayne West, Corinne Bailey Rae and Seal and became the choreographers for the European MTV Awards.

In 2005 she co-founded AMCK management which has swiftly become Europe’s biggest and most successful dance agency representing Choreographer and dancers from around the world and working with the biggest names in the entertainment industry.
Having not forgotten why she stopped dancing, Aicha picked up again on her acting. After having small parts in films like James Bond and Ali G she landed a lead role in the new movie Clubbed written by Bafta winning writer Geoff Thompson.

In 2007 Aicha was named one of the 50 most powerful and successful black women by The New Nation publication, which hosted together with Ken Livingston, the black leaders dinner at the Dorchester with the Nelson Mandela family.

All of this has kept Aicha a busy woman but she still finds time to be a mother and recently a wife! She had a son (Iggy) in 2004 and so juggles travelling working and reading “the hungry caterpiller”!

Link to Aicha's Showreel