United Kingdom The Return of the Legends: Cliffs Pavilion, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, 24.9.2025. (JPr)
Legends: Brendan Cole, James Jordan, Pasha Kovalev, Vincent Simone, Ian Waite
Female Partners: Victoria Martin (Dance Captain), Lowri Beth, Alexandra Busheva, Julia Ruiz Fernández, Polina Mayer
Creatives include:
Director & Choreographer – Scott Coldwell
Assistant Choreographer – James Cutler
Music director – Matt Howes
Set & Lighting design – Dougie FF Cairns
Sound design – Jon Roache
Costume stylist – Carol Howard
The delights of a matinee performance ten miles from home is that you expect to be back nice and early for a relaxed evening, but that doesn’t factor in a two-hour delay due to a road closure! Nevertheless, reflecting on the whole ‘experience’ there was sheer delight at having spent well over two hours in the company of five highly talented entertainers, clearly enjoying being in each other’s company in front of their adoring fans. I will remember The Return of the Legends as much for the sheer professionalism of everyone on the stage – five Legends and their partners – in a slick, well-rehearsed show, as for all the infectious good humour and sheer joy of dancing.
Once again, a glossy souvenir programme for The Return of the Legends reminds – if anyone at the show needs reminding – of why Brendan Cole, James Jordan, Pasha Kovalev, Vincent Simone, and Ian Waite achieved legendary status when they were on BBC TV’s Strictly Come Dancing during its, so far, 21 years. Brendan and Ian were there from 2004 for several years while Pasha – who joined in 2011 – was the last to leave in 2018. In the programme Ian Waite says, ‘What amazes me was that, some 20 years after we all started on Strictly, give or take, we can still fill a theatre and very often with exactly the same audience that enjoyed us on TV in the noughties.’ And indeed, I was one of those in an, of course, predominantly elderly – yet very enthusiastic – Cliffs Pavilion.
At the start the Legends are shown introducing themselves on small screens to the rear of Dougie Cairns’s set – familiar from the last tour – which will remind you a little of how dancers enter on Strictly. There are two sets of stairs down from a high-up walkway and bracketed with red curtains. There is no live music so where the band would be is LEGENDS spelled out in huge letters with LED bulbs that can change colour to bring some atmosphere – along with the small screens – to the dancing. The large ‘E’ also allows for the entrance and exit of the dancers during some of the numbers. The fabulous costumes run the gamut from simple elegance to dazzlingly sequined.
Ian Waite continues in the programme by saying how the Legends will perform ‘a number of new routines under Scott Coldwell’s excellent choreography along with some of the most popular dances from last year. But it’s going to feel like a whole new show’. My only minor criticism of The Return of the Legends is that it drew too heavily on what the five dancers performed at the Cliffs last year. (There was a reason for this though with the current much longer tour going to some venues for the first time.) Everything was so polished and so wonderfully presented that it really didn’t matter at all, as it might have done in lesser hands or rather, feet. Nevertheless, I look forward to the brand new show we are promised for autumn 2026!
Genuinely what sets The Return of the Legends apart from all the other Strictly-related shows recently was how much it was a genuine exhibition of the various dance styles we are all very familiar with by now. James Jordan announced this in the Legends Come Dancing section as ‘some pure dance magic’ and indeed that is exactly what it was: Ian and his partner Lowri Beth danced a hypnotically dreamy Viennese Waltz to The Blue Danube, there was a fierce Paso Doble from Brendan and Alexandra Busheva, James and Polina Mayer danced a suitably sensual Rumba, Pasha and Julia Ruiz Fernández an energetic Samba, and finally there was an expressive Argentine Tango from Vincent and Victoria Martin. Again in the second half there were similar wonderful moments from Ian’s self-proclaimed ‘Very butch number’ with Lowri to ‘Come Alive’ (from The Greatest Shouman), high-class Argentine Tango again from Vincent and Victoria (to The Godfather’s ‘Parla Più Piano’), a captivating contemporary Rumba from Brendan and Alexandra to ‘I’ll Never Love Again’ (from the 2018 film ‘A Star is Born’), Pasha and Julia’s rampant Paso-inspired number to ‘Rewrite the Stars’ from The Greatest Showman, and finally James and Polina’s (literally) show-stopping and energy-sapping Jive to ‘I’m Still Standing’ from Rocketman … and (jokily) he wasn’t at the end!
It is important to note how crucial the extremely gifted female dancers were to the success of the show and of course they had their own moments in the spotlight in the group numbers and especially Vincent’s sultry ‘Cell Block Tango’ from Chicago. Other highlights included the movie legends dance-offs between Ian’s Gene Kelly and Brendan’s Fred Astaire, followed by James’s Patrick Swayze challenging Pasha’s John Travolta. There was an upbeat end to the first half at the ‘Legends Bar’ featuring the song ‘Minnie the Moocher’. After the interval there was the riotous Western-themed number from last year and the show officially ended with a tribute to the swing/big band era featuring the songs made famous by Frank Sinatra and others such as ‘That’s Life’, ‘Fly Me to the Moon’, ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’ and ending with a rousing ‘My Way’ from all concerned which brought the audience in the Cliffs to their feet. Yet there was still more high-octane dancing to come from the indefatigable Legends and their female partners in the extended finale which kept the audience standing, dancing and clapping through to its stamina-sapping ‘Proud Mary’ ending.
That the dancing would be so great is not a given since the Legends vary in ages from 45 to 54. The five still-incredible dancers deserve immense credit for – as I also wrote last year – taking their responsibility to their audience very seriously. Apart from the dancing there were again many real laugh-out-loud moments during all the one-upmanship, some self-deprecation, teasing, and much (mild) innuendo. The level of humour can be gauged from Vincent’s opening remarks of ‘I was thinking of all those amazing standing ovulations we had last year, and we want to see everyone ovulating again!’ That – as I wrote earlier – they certainly did!
More significantly I totally believed Brendan at the end when he said how lucky they all felt and what an amazing feeling it was for them to be (still) doing what they love doing. He concluded, ‘We thank you all from the bottom of our hearts. All the time you want to watch us dance, we’ll keep dancing.’ And I’ll want to be there too!
Jim Pritchard
Featured Image: The Return of The Legends © Ryan Howard (for The TCB Group)
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