Strictly Come Dancing: The Professionals Tour to Boogie Down to Plymouth in May 2020

The national tour of Strictly Come Dancing: The Professionals will be visiting Plymouth for two dates in 2020, bringing many of the dancers from the hugely popular BBC series. The Plymouth Pavilions will be host to the dance extravaganza on May 24 and May 25, falling in the middle of a run that sees the tour visit 15 locations throughout the United Kingdom.

This follows a successful tour this year, in which The Professionals received glowing reviews from critics and audiences. As a television show, Strictly Come Dancing inevitably becomes as much about the celebrities’ personalities as it does the dancing. In this tour format, the skills of the professional dancers are uninhibited, while the customary high-production values of Strictly make for a spectacular show.

The Shropshire Star described last year’s show in Birmingham as a "dazzling display of dance talent", with plenty of comedy, stories and audience participation to complement the dancing. Society Aberdeen picked out the costumes as one of the show’s many top-notch qualities, also praising how the night gives the audience an insight into the life of these professional Strictly performers.

This year, audiences will have the chance to get to know a collection of decorated dancers, who balance their Strictly schedules with participating (and often winning) at the highest levels of competitive dancing.

The Professionals
Dianne Buswell
Nadiya Bychkova
Graziano di Prima
Karen Hauer
Katya Jones
Neil Jones
Oti Mabuse
Gorka Marquez
Luba Mushtuk
Johannes Radebe

There will be no competition when the tour waltzes into the Plymouth Pavilions. Instead, the dancers will collaborate to create some memorable performances. Of the professionals joining the tour this year, only Katya Jones has helped their celebrity partner to win a series of the television show. While the professionals are all remarkably talented, their fortunes in the show are dependent on their partner’s performance.

However, Jones should take a huge amount of credit for defying the odds and helping her partner Joe McFadden to triumph in Series 15.

Those partnered with one of the younger celebrities naturally stand a better chance of going deep into the series. Betway conducted research on the participants of Strictly through the years, producing data that shows how all but one of 32 celebrities to finish in the top two of a series have been in their 20s or 30s. The exception is the then-41-year-old McFadden.

For that reason, Jones may be the most familiar dancer on the tour, although Mabuse (partner to Hollyoaks star Danny Mac), Marquez (Alexandra Burke) and Buswell (Joe Sugg) have all featured as runners-up in recent seasons. With tickets now available from Ticketmaster, Devon-based fans of Strictly Come Dancing won’t want to miss the glitz and glamour of the tour when it arrives in May.