STRICTLY Come Dancing has become a national treasure and phenomenon with 14.3 million people watching the final in December 2017. Yorkshire’s Strictly Come Dancing fans had another chance this last week to see the newly crowned Strictly winner, Joe McFadden and his partner Katya Jones at the Leeds Arena for a two night stay. Joe was joined on the dance floor by six other celebrities from the last series, Gemma Atkinson, Alexandra Burke, Susan Calman, Davood Ghadami, Debbie McGee and Jonnie Peacock.

The tour is being hosted by new compere Ore Oduba the winner of the 2016 series whilst TV judges Darcey Bussell, Craig Revel Horwood (who also directs the tour) and Bruno Tonioli acted as the judges for the night.

The seven pairs of contestants were Gemma Atkinson with Aljaz Skorjanec, Alexandra Burke with Gorka Marquez, Susan Calman with Kevin Clifton, Davood Ghadami with Nadiya Bychkova, Joe McFadden with Katya Jones, Debbie McGee with Giovanni Pernici, and Jonnie Peacock with Oti Mabuse.

The show consists of two halves, with each of the seven couples dancing two different routines, one in each of the halves of the show. These are then critiqued by the three judges and given scores which are purely for guidance. The main result at the end of the evening is down to the audience who are asked from the interval onwards to vote by text for their favourite couple, and part of the charge for these texts is being donated to Sport Relief. The dances this year included Samba, Argentine Tango, Jive, Charleston, American Smooth, Viennese Waltz and Quickstep.

I thought that this year’s show was excellent, mainly down to both the quality of the dancing but also to the fabulous compering by Ore Oduba who many readers will know as a presenter on various BBC’s Sports programmes. He was an excellent compere with a superb rapport with both the contestants and the judges.

When watching the series on TV, one does not realise quite how brilliant the dance steps are until one has seen the show live. It is so fast moving and the energy that the dancers exude is phenomenal. And also the costumes, lighting and sound is so different live as well. The capacity audience of 13,500 at the arena absolutely loved the show as evidenced by the tremendous applause at the end when Gemma Atkinson and her partner Aljaz Skorjanec were presented with the glitter ball having won the audience vote. This was probably due to the many Emmerdale fans in the audience plus also quite a number of the cast working with Gemma on that popular TV soap that were also present in the audience.

A fabulous night and one that the audience will remember for a long time.

by John Burland