Emma Boardman is a woman of extreme talent, drive, experience and inspiration. Despite having suffered some hard knocks along her journey to Mallorca, she has learnt from them all and is now a global creative strategist, speaker, soul-stirrer and publisher based in Valldemossa, where she says she has “found her sweet spot” which is vital to a balanced life.
Born in Dorset, she took the leap into what became a hugely competitive and demanding life at the age of two when she took up gymnastics. “I guess I was a hyperactive child and this was a way of helping me channel my energy,” she told the Bulletin this week. And it was not long before she was competing at very high standards and attracting a growing amount of attention.
“I was trained by two former Olympians, it was very demanding and I had to really push myself. I took it very seriously and it dominated by childhood and it was all going very well until I injured my ankle at the age of 16 and it all came to a sudden end overnight. It was a shock, I was left wondering what I was going to do, I was at a loss and at such a young age. I didn’t want to go to university to sit around studying, I wanted to be active, so after my A Levels I decided to move into dance. It seemed to be the most obvious step. So I trained for three years in London and again channeled all of my efforts into dance and, thanks to my many years as a gymnast, I had a bag of tricks my contemporaries didn’t and also got noticed,” she said.
“I started to get cast for TV shows, films and then became a member of the German pop band Heath Hunter & The Pleasure Company, which had a massive hit Revolution in Paradise in 1996, and before I knew it we were on tour with NSYNC. They had just hit the European scene in a big way and I was suddenly on the tour bus sitting next to Justin Timberlake and his mum. It was a wild and great 18 months being a key part of a top Eurotrash band. It was great use of my dancing, and it opened my eyes to a whole different world. It was a great fun experience and I loved it while it lasted and that led to me becoming a late-night TV presenter on Sky covering the club and live music scene. It all helped to pay the rent while broadening my horizons and expanding my skills.” she said.
Loss of hearing shock “That was the first time I had ever done live TV with a studio director talking in my ear and I suddenly realised that I was having trouble hearing the director. It transpired I had a 75% hearing loss in both ears. It was very awkward and the industry was not as open, diverse and welcoming then as it is now. I was not going to be the presenter with hearing aids in both ears. So that was another chapter that came to an end and I was again left wondering what to do next.
“That is when I learnt to look at what I was good at. I was a survivor, it was ingrained in me. So I looked at what I had, what I was good at and what I could do. I had a lot of great contacts due to all the people I had met over the years in the entertainment industry so I set up the Boardman Bookings agency in London and it was very successful. It was period of ‘anything goes’ in the city and we were busy booking people for all kinds of parties and events and we grew and expanded. I even ended up with 3,000 wonderful theatre costumes which once belonged to the designer for the Monty Python films.
“It was all going so well until the great crash in 2008 - the party suddenly came to an end, it was over. It was all austerity, the luxuries were forgotten. We were liquidated and it was quite embarrassing to say the least. It was probably the biggest wake-up call of my life,” she said. “Not long after I became a mother, but I struggled. I felt like a tiger in a cage. So we hired an au pair and that gave me some freedom again and time to think.
