Mum was heavily into roller disco back in the deeply embarrassing 1970s, so what on earth was a doting son to do? For Steve Love there was only one possibility - set up an international roller dance group. He began learning the hard way, jumping over dustbins on the streets of New York and surviving the era of battling, when rival gangs engaged in dance-offs, rather than knife each other. All very West Side Story.
He went on, cool intact, to study to be a doctor but the skating kept getting in the way. At 16, he had been cast in a pilot television show called Let's Skate America, that eventually got him into show business. 'In 1985 I got a job skating in a nightclub duet. I did it for four and a half years and really that became basis of what I'm doing now,' he says.
His New York Roller Dance Company glides into town on August 26-28 to show the New Territories how it's possible to do everything from jazz to hip-hop while hurtling around stage. They do pirouettes. They do the shuffle. But they do it all while wearing roller skates.
Don't get this show wrong, though, warns Love. 'The show is choreographed. It's not just get out there and boogie. It's only people who have a strong background in dance who can handle this work. We don't want to be a Roller Capades.'
His company of 12 people is about extending the possibilities of dance, he says. 'Skates add a third dimension to pedestrian movement. Why accept a triple pirouette when you can spin 15 to 20 times?' he shrugs. 'With skates you can turn faster, jump higher,' says Love. 'You have the option to move more. It took years to get it to work the way I wanted it to go. For a start we had to learn how not to roll.' But the acts, set to everything from Bach to pop music, still came out of traditional roller skating. 'I caught the wave of those times, just adapted it. There's a rhythm, a bounce, an urban feel straight from the street which I was able to put on skates.'
He's branching out now with a new show - without the roller skates. 'It has all the elements of skating but ... the new show, Break, has its own feeling. It's a street thing, a message of defiance from kids, tapping into that whole street thing.' He'll be taking his new dance show around Asia after his roller-dance company appears here.