Strictly Come Dancing 2021: The 10 Best Halloween Dances of the Week, Ranked

Halloween is here again, which means Come dance strictly brings her annual fantasy back to the dance floor.

Due to the pandemic, 2020 was the first year Strictly has gone without a Halloween special since 2007. As a result, this year’s show promises to be better than ever.

Over the years, we’ve seen hundreds of dancers take part in the themed competition week, hoping to impress the judges with less complicated, more enjoyable routines.

For fans, Halloween is one of the biggest nights of the Strictly calendar. Design-wise, it doesn’t get much more than that, with the perfect performance featuring a spooky costume and a well-tied song choice. It’s not always easy, however, and we often see a slightly creepy song title paired with a random costume that doesn’t really make sense or scream Halloween. After all, there are only a limited number of times the show can make the “Monster Mash”.

The best Halloween dances bring it all together, from design and music to (naturally) the dance itself. Among this top 10, we have a lot of tangos, if only because all their intense and whimsical side lends itself well to the spirit of Halloween. Spooky sambas, salsas, and cha cha chas are comparatively much harder to find.

Here are 10 of the greatest Strictly Dances of the week of Halloween, classified …

10. Scott Maslen and Natalie Lowe – Viennese Waltz

If you can count on anything for StrictlyIt’s Halloween week, it’s an even more gimmicky episode than usual. But there was a time when the show was less about disguises and overly obvious themes. This waltz from 2010 semi-finalists Maslen and Lowe manages to dodge the clichés (if you can look past the giant cauldron on stage), with a beautiful, simple, and clean ballroom dance to “I Put a Spell on You” it’s just the right level of phantasmagoria, while still being utterly charming.

9. Alexandra Burke and Gorka Marquez – Tango

Burke remains one of the most naturally gifted dancers to ever perform on Strictlyso her Halloween week dance was always going to be good. The zombie-themed tango of her and Marquez on “Maneater” is one of the many incredible performances she’s done on the show, with the pair covering huge amounts of ground and doing totally tricks and lifts. different in this fiery dance. Is it as good as his Argentine tango, no (but then again, what is it?), But it captures the spooky spirit perfectly.

8. Louise Redknapp and Kevin Clifton – Charleston

The year is 2016, Suicide Squad just released and Harley Quinn is the children’s Halloween costume of the day. Redknapp joined the craze with her blue and pink pigtails for her Charleston to Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” (Gatsby the magnificent original soundtrack version), with his partner Clifton his mischievous Joker. The choice of music is a little odd, but it’s a smart theme and a great dance, with Clifton especially recreating the manic Jared Leto glow in his eyes.

7. Kelvin Fletcher and Oti Mabuse – Tango

Recently released songs go two ways when used on Strictly – either they fit the dance style well or they don’t (here is last week’s “Watermelon Sugar” double speed salsa). But “Bad Guy” is a song that was made to be tango, Billie Eilish’s whisper is the perfect generator of tension while the electronic breakdown in the bridge compliments a quick stride on the floor perfectly. Fletcher brought that drama to his 2019 vampiric performance with Mabuse, starting the dance levitating above the dance floor in a mesh shirt and vest combo (something for moms at home, as Bruce Forsyth would say) , before giving a staccato and electric performance.

6. Alex Scott and Kevin Clifton – The Couple’s Choice

The ghost hunters the theme is a repeat offender at StrictlyHalloween week, featured on the show in 2012, 2015 and 2019. The best routine was the most recent, in which Scott and Clifton (the latter replacing Neil Jones at the last minute) performed a street / commercial routine chosen by a couple for the song. It might not be a moody tango or paso, but this fun dance still looks decidedly Halloween, with some great turns and even a bit of a moon walk. It’s also memorable as one of those rare occasions when the pro, not the celebrity, forgets the routine, but the pair manage to cover it up well and that makes Scott look better. The dancers, they are like us!

5. Ashley Roberts and Pasha Kovalev – Charleston

Let’s get rid of the obvious things first: yes, the costumes in this dance are terrible. It’s unclear what Roberts and Kovalev are actually dressed in (I guess that would be some sort of troll-imp-ogre hybrid?), But the addition of Kovalev’s fake belly is unforgivable and distracts her attention. performance. Fortunately, Roberts is such a natural dancer that she makes up for it. The pair are always in sync, the lifts are excellent and the kicks and kicks are incredibly sharp. Is it scary? No. Is the Alvin and the Chipmunks voice effect needed? Not at all. It is Strictly Halloween week – nothing makes sense.

4. Frankie Bridge and Kevin Clifton – Tango

Among the sea of ​​Halloween tangos, Bridge and Clifton’s Bad-The “Defying Gravity” themed dance comes first. The Saturday star looks amazing in her green Elphaba stand up, the dancing remaining passionate and blazingly fast throughout. The track might not automatically seem the best suited for the type of dance, but it somehow works and remains one of Clifton’s best choreographies.

3. Faye Tozer and Giovanni Pernice – The Couple’s Choice

The “couple’s choice” routine on Strictly may now be a free genre for everyone, but when it was first introduced contestants could choose between street / commercial, contemporary, or theater / jazz. The former turned out to be the most popular, but arguably the loudest of all time has to be Tozer and Pernice’s electric theater and jazz routine to Peggy Lee’s “Fever”. In a way, making the tuxedos and skeleton makeup sexy is a performance that embodies cool (or as cool as Strictly gets, anyway). From Tozer swinging around her long ponytail like Indiana Jones to the amazing donning sunglasses in the middle of the routine, there’s it all.

2. Kara Tointon and Artem Chigvintsev – Paso Doble

The Phantom of the Opera is the ideal solution for Strictly Halloween week – it’s scary, but also, and most importantly, incredibly camp. As a result, the lead song was used a few times, but future winners Tointon and Chigvintsev set the gold standard for Halloween performances in general in 2010 with this exciting paso. Resisting Christine Daae’s full ring costume, Tointon’s performance is sexy and powerful rather than minauding, with all the hissing skirt and ridiculously tall lifts you could possibly want.

1. Michelle Visage and Giovanni Pernice – Foxtrot

When you have a Strictly contestant who looks as much like Morticia Addams as he does Face without a costume, doing something other than a Addams Family-A themed routine for Halloween would be a crime. Scott Mills first danced to the theme song as a hunched Uncle Fester in 2014, but Visage and Pernice (the pro with the highest Halloween charts) did something totally different with their foxtrot. Seeing him play the smirking Gomez and peck Visage’s arm is just the right amount of comedy, but the dancing is also light, airy, and gor-juss (to use a Craig Revel Horwood-ism). And, above all, it’s not a tango! A real Halloween miracle.

Come dance strictly returns Saturday October 30 at 7:10 p.m. on BBC One.