Have A Night to Remember with Strictly’s Aljaž and Janette, their dancers and live band

United Kingdom Aljaž and Janette A Night to Remember: Cliffs Pavilion, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, 20.5.2025. (JPr)

Much has happened for married dancers Aljaž Škorjanec and Janette Manrara since I last saw them in Southend-on-the-Sea (as Aljaž named the city!) in December 2023 (review here). That was not long after the birth of their daughter Lyra, and while Janette was still presenting Strictly Comes Dancing’s It Takes Two on BBC Two and co-hosting the Strictly Live tour, Aljaž had stepped away from ‘to focus on other commitments’. One of those, of course, was being a new father. Now only 17 months later much has happened and Aljaž made – as the good-value glossy souvenir brochure explains – ‘his triumphant return to Strictly Come Dancing in 2024, and made it all the way to the final with his partner, Tasha Gouri. On the live tour that followed, they won almost all of the 35 shows and were crowned the Strictly Come Dancing Live Champions.’

Meanwhile Janette is currently in the midst of a six-month tour of the UK and Ireland of the musical Chicago (review here). Janette says ‘You don’t get leading ladies like Rosie too often. She’s kind of fragile and dark and vulnerable and sexy. I’m really proud to have come full circle back to musicals.’ Janette currently has four weeks off for the 21 A Night to Remember shows. (Interestingly, based on Aljaž’s singing of the Frank Sinatra/Count Basie classic ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ there just might be something in musicals for him too.)

I must be honest and remark on how there are just too many Strictly Come Dancing-related shows these days; it seems every other week one or two of its dancers are getting their own show. Make the best of it while you can because tickets sales for some of these have been less than stellar, I’m told; with only Anton Du Beke, Giovanni Pernice (separately or together), the Live tour, ‘The Legends’ and, of course, Aljaž and Janette capable of truly filling theatres it seems.

The USP of A Night to Remember is the involvement of pianist and vocalist Tom Seals and his band (an exceptional quintet of musicians). He is a name new to me, but think Jools Holland, whom he regularly performs duelling piano shows with. As Janette explains in the programme: ‘Aljaž and I hadn’t danced to live music for ages. It’s a completely different feeling from dancing to a backing tape … Now we’re going on the road in a show with Tom and his band. And it’s going to be a little different. It won’t be just about dancing although we’ll have four other professional dancers performing with us. It will also be about the music and the mood it creates.’

There was an unusual start to the show with an offstage announcement that the audience could do all the filming and take all the photos they wanted as long as they were mindful of people around them. To be honest, everyone – at least around us – was very restrained and respectful.

On a simple set which created a sophisticated Las Vegas dinner cabaret vibe and with frequent changes of costumes – so sparkly I felt I needed sunglasses – this was an excellent show of songs old and new, great music, excellent dancing and good humour. The charismatic Aljaž and Janette are the stars of course but Tom Seals and his musicians, versatile vocalist Jill Marie Cooper, and four extraordinarily talented dancers made this, well, A Night to Remember. A one point Aljaž says how their dancers are ’young, fresh, they’ve all had some sleep and they’re not touring with the mother-in-law!’ There was plenty of enjoyable banter between Aljaž, Janette, Tom and his band with plenty of laughs from Tom himself. This included when he says how he gets ‘to tour the world with my best friends, but they’re not here’, as well as tongue-in-cheek humour when we learn the original singer of ‘Fever’ was Little Willie John and an (apparently) unscripted moment when Aljaž says how easy it is to get a ten on Strictly with the foxtrot, though Tom hears ‘tan’! On the other hand, we got an interesting lesson from Tom in how on the piano the left-hand bass line is the ‘Boogie’ and the riffing right-hand is the ‘Woogie’, something he learnt from Jools Holland apparently.

All the songs we heard were given a big band treatment (‘a jazz and bluesy spin’) with arrangements by music director and trumpet player Jack Tinker. They ranged from American standards (such as Sinatra’s ‘That’s Life’ and Judy Garland’s ‘Get Happy’) to Teddy Swims’s very recent ‘Lose Control’ (wonderfully sung by Jill Marie and expressively danced by Aljaž and Janette): with much else including Beyoncé (‘Crazy in Love’) Charlie Puth and Meghan Trainor’s ‘Marvin Gaye’, Benson Boone’s ‘Beautiful Things’ and Tom’s tribute to Billy Joel. Indeed, standing out amongst everything Tom sang was Joel’s reflective ‘Piano Man’ (which I realised owes so much to Jerry Jeff Walker’s ‘Mr Bojangles’).

The most energy-sapping dancing is by Aljaž and Janette’s quartet of dancers, enthusiastically rockabilly jiving, swinging, lindy hopping, tapping and even street dancing, or otherwise involved in a variety of typically Fosse-esque routines. The duets Aljaž and Janette themselves dance are by their own admission a fusion of Viennese waltz and lots of contemporary – variants of American Smooth if you will – whether timeless or up-tempo. It is during even more romantic Rumba-ish numbers – such as The Carpenters’ ‘Superstar (Don’t You Remember You Told Me You Loved Me Baby)’ delightfully sung by Jill Marie – that you divine what an absolute delight it is for Aljaž and Janette to be dancing together again for their own apparent enjoyment and ours too.

By the time most of the Cliffs Pavilion audience were on their feet dancing and swaying away to Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington’s ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing’ and watching the entire company bringing A Night to Remember to a stamina-sapping, joyful ending: then Aljaž and Janette’s promised return next year cannot come soon enough.

Jim Pritchard

Aljaž Škorjanec and Janette Manrara (co-creators and choreography) and Company (Jill Marie Cooper [vocals], Kiera Brunton [dance captain and assistant choreographer], Natasha Mould, Tonyé Scott-Obene, Nick Godfrey [ensemble]), Gareth Walker (show director and choreographer), Tom Seals [vocals, piano], Jack Tinker [music director, trumpet], Roger Inniss [bass], Vito Vultaggio [drums], Greg Coulson [organ], Chris ‘Beebe’ Alridge [saxophone]), Doug FF Cairns (set and lighting designer), Jon Roache (sound design), Carol Howard (costume stylist)

For more about the Aljaž and Janette A Night to Remember tour click here.

Featured Image: Cast of Aljaž and Janette A Night to Remember © Carys Griffiths