Strictly Come Dancing’s Jayde Adams tears up after standing ovation for same-sex performance
Jayde and Karen after their Strictly Come Dancing performance. (BBC)
Strictly Come Dancing’s all-female dance pair brought an emotional samba to the dancefloor as Jayde Adams came close to tears after her debut performance.
Both Adams and professional dancing partner Karen Hauer left it all on the dancefloor during Saturday’s (24 September) show as they danced to Christina Aguilera’s Dirty.
Their high-energy act earned a standing ovation from the audience, who clearly loved every second of it, but the event quickly became too much for Adams, who, while holding back tears, asked co-host Tess Daly to “pinch me.”
Judge Motsi Mabuse was a huge fan of the piece, telling the pair: “You came down the steps and I said, ‘Samba you are in trouble, you have never met this woman!’
“You’re absolutely contagious, I mean, the energy, the selling point, the performance, we have got all of that. Please do me a favour, keep it up!” The judge continued. “But work on those techniques, work on those feet, and work on sustaining that level.”
Additionally, the notoriously critical judge Craig Revel Horwood had a lot to say about the performance, telling the group “it was a little bit flat-footed for me” but reassuring the two that “you have rhythm, you feel the music, and you [have] lovely sharp arms.”
Jayde and Karen both left the dancefloor with a respectable 23 out of 40, landing them squarely in the middle of the competition’s leaderboard.
But the female couple weren’t the only same-sex sensation that sauntered onto the vinyl stage. All-male couple Richie Anderson and Giovanni Pernice wowed audience members with an iconically queer cha-cha.
Starting on top of a giant rubix cube, Anderson jumped straight into I’m Your Man by Wham! to a sensational performance.
The Strictly Come Dancing judges were amazed at the energy on display during the dance, with judge Anton du Beke asking for “more of that” while head judge Shirley Ballas said that “the hip was a little bit locked, but the flexibility on the upper half and the roll on the bottom, I mean, you brought it.”
Richie and Giovanni earned the same score of 23, locking them in a tie-breaker with Jayde and Karen, as well as couple Kym Marsh and Graziano Di Prima who danced the jive to Yes by Merry Clayton.
While the score means that both pairs are locked firmly in the safe spot on the leaderboard, they’re going to have to step up their performance if they hope to stay on.
But, so far, that’s no issue for couples Will Mellor and Nancy Xu, and Hamza Yassin and Jowita Przystał, who respectively earned the top spot with a score of 34.
Meanwhile, contestants Tony Adams and Katya Jones ended up last with a score of 15 out of 40. While they won’t be eliminated this week, they risk being sent home if their dance skills don’t improve by next week’s show on 2 October.
