Dust off your dancing shoes, Strictly Come Dancing is waltzing back onto BBC One for its 17th series. The NTA and BAFTA award-winning entertainment show produced by BBC Studios returns with more sparkle, glitz and glamour than ever.
The celebrities strutting their stuff on the dance floor this series are Alex Scott MBE, Jamie Laing, Will Bayley MBE, Anneka Rice, James Cracknell OBE, Dev Griffin , Michelle Visage, Viscountess Weymouth Emma Thynn, Karim Zeroual, Mike Bushell, Catherine Tyldesley, Saffron Barker, Emma Barton, Chris Ramsey and David James MBE.
On Saturday 7th September at 7.10pm, Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman host an exclusive premiere and roll out the red carpet to welcome the celebrity class of 2019 as they prepare to begin their Strictly adventure.
The fifteen celebrity contestants will make their grand entrance from the red carpet into the famous Strictly ballroom to discover which professional dancer they will be paired with. Once the pairings have been announced the celebrities and professionals will take to the dancefloor for the very first time for what promises to be, an entertaining group performance, launching the new series in Strictly style.
Our fabulous judges Bruno Tonioli, Craig Revel Horwood and Shirley Ballas return to the panel and will be casting their expert judgement every week. This year, they will be joined by new judge Motsi Mabuse, who has been a judge on the German version of the show since 2011.
World-class Latin dancer Nancy Xu joins the professional line-up this year alongside AJ Pritchard, Aljaž Škorjanec, Amy Dowden, Anton Du Beke, Dianne Buswell, Giovanni Pernice, Gorka Marquez, Graziano Di Prima, Janette Manrara, Johannes Radebe, Karen Hauer, Katya Jones, Kevin Clifton, Luba Mushtuk, Nadiya Bychkova, Neil Jones and Oti Mabuse.
Once the celebrities are paired up with their professional dancer, they will have two weeks to rehearse before returning to the ballroom to perform live to the nation every Saturday night. There will be no public vote in the first week and the results show with Tess and Claudia will begin from week two on Sunday nights. From then, each week the two couples with the lowest combined scores, from the judges and public vote, will face each other in the dance off, and one couple will leave the competition for good.
At the halfway stage of the competition and now a Strictly Come Dancing tradition, the show will travel to the international home of ballroom dancing where the celebrities and their partners will perform at the world famous Blackpool Tower Ballroom.
Rylan Clark-Neal and Zoë Ball will co-host Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two on BBC Two. The weekday show is back with even more exclusive access and backstage gossip than ever before.
Finally, there will be exclusive behind-the-scenes action available on the official Strictly website at bbc.co.uk/strictly and across social media on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. There will also be even more Strictly news to enjoy via the official Strictly Come Dancing podcast.
It Takes Two
The weekday half-hour sister show to Strictly is back with even more exclusive access and backstage gossip than ever before. For the first time ever, Strictly superfan Rylan Clark-Neal will be presenting the popular teatime show on Mondays and Tuesdays, with former Strictly contestant, television, and radio superstar Zoe Ball returning to host Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Both Zoe and Rylan will present It Take Two’s hour-long special on Fridays, filmed in front of a live studio audience and joined by extra special guests.
Ian Waite will also return each week with ‘Waite’s Warm-up’ to analyse the couples in the training rooms and Strictly favourite Gethin Jones returns as roving reporter and will be giving viewers a sneak peek of all the action at rehearsals in Elstree Studios ahead of the Saturday live show.
