Review: Strictly Come Dancing Live! at First Direct Arena, Leeds

First staged in 2008 as a spin-off from the long-running BBC One entertainment show, the Strictly Come Dancing Live! tour has brought the glitz and glamour of the Strictly ballroom to arenas up and down the country for 17 years.

This, the first date of a two-night run at the First Direct Arena in Leeds, featured six of the leading celebrity dancers from the 2024 series in pairings with Strictly’s expert cast of professionals.

The Stricty Live! show has two dates in Leeds on Thursday January 30 and Friday January 31. The show is hosted by Strictly – It Takes Two’s Janette Manrara, and we are treated to all the TV show’s four judges, as Motsi Mabuse joins Craig Revel Horwood, Shirley Ballas and Anton du Beke on the judging panel.

Introducing the show, Manrara points out that between them the judges “have 200 years combined dancing experience”. Ballas quips that this year they are the “awesome foursome”.

The pairings this year for the live tour are Jamie Borthwick and Michelle Tsiakkas, Montell Douglas and Kai Widdrington, Tasha Ghouri and Aljaž Škorjanec, JB Gill with Amy Dowden and Lauren Oakley, Shayne Ward and Nancy Xu, and Sarah Hadland with Nikita Kuzmin.

The opera singer Wynne Evans, whose professional dancer is Katya Jones, is not in the Leeds line-up after a recent controversy. He is taking time out of his BBC radio show and the Strictly Live tour to “prioritise his wellbeing”.

Ward and Xu kick off the show dramatically with the opening dance, their tango from week two of the Strictly TV Show. Ballas advises they had gone from being “ordinary to extraordinary”. Quite an accolade.

Much to the fans’ delight, Dowden is welcomed back and a huge round of applause ripples through the arena – to which she responds: “It is lush to be back.”

Dowden and Gill beautifully dance the waltz. Du Beke said it is “sublime”. Gill shares his second dance, the samba, with Oakley. It has a real flavour of a Brazilian party and Revel Horwood declares it “fabulous”.

Borthwick and Tsiakkas’ second dance, the paso doble, is tense, fierce and fast-paced and Ballas says he may not have won the glitter ball but he wins the technical ball and gives an emotional Borthwick her own handwritten book of dancing techniques.

Hadland and Kuzmin’s dance the cha-cha-cha to Like a Prayer by Madonna, which the audience lap up. Hadland, the “pocket rocket”, says she is “channelling her inner Madonna”. Mabuse says: “This year was about phenomenal women and you are one of them.”

Widdrington replaces Johannes Radebe as Douglas’ partner and their salsa danced to The Communards’ Don’t Leave Me This Way has a fantastic, upbeat party scene which Mabuse sums up as “disco fever”.

Before the results are revealed, comedian Chris McCausland and his professional partner, Dianne Buswell, winners of Strictly Come Dancing’s 2024 TV series, pay tribute to the show. McCausland is beamed in and apologises for not being able to be at show as he was back to the day job and says: “I am so proud and didn’t expect Strictly to be so meaningful and emotional.”

The final judges’ scores are close. The winning couple from the final vote is Ghouri and Škorjanec, and the runners-up are Hadland and Kuzmin.

Ghouri and Škorjanec wowed the audience with their show dance and waltz which both scored the maximum 40 from the four judges. The waltz was breath-taking, emotional, a love story and Mabuse said it was “perfection and you could hear a pin drop”. Ballas said the show dance was, “the Rolls-Royce of ballroom dancing”.

Ghouri, from Thirsk, proudly says that “Yorkshire is my home” and Škorjanec concludes that it was his “best decision to come back to the show”.

Craig Revel Horwood presents the glitter ball to Ghouri and Škorjanec and says: “Tonight was super special. Thank you Leeds, everyone is a winner.”

The Strictly Come Dancing Live! tour continues tonight at First Direct Arena, Leeds before moving to the AO Arena, Manchester on February 1 and 2. https://strictlycomedancinglive.com/