Strictly Come Dancing’s Sambathon week is finally upon us, which means we’re in for an evening of excitement, glitter, and a lot of bota fogos.
The remaining Strictly stars - Montell Douglas, Sarah Hadland, Pete Wicks, Tasha Ghouri, Chris McCausland, JB Gill and Jamie Borthwick - will take to the ballroom this Saturday (November 23) for the high-energy dance-off alongside their partners.
It’s the first time since 2018 that the Strictly producers have decided to bring back the often chaotic dance week.
After their main dance on the show, the couples will all perform simultaneously to impress the judges with their samba moves and get the most points.
It means the ballroom will be full, and the stars will need to pull out all the stops to make their samba skills stand out among the rest of the cast.
Dance-a-thons were a staple feature in past Strictly seasons, but they’ve not always gone to plan. For example, in 2018, during the Lindy Hop-a-thon, technical difficulties threw the judges off and led to them announcing the wrong results.
But it looks like this year, the team is ready. Here’s everything you need to know.
What is a Samba-thon?
Strictly dance-a-thons are group challenges, where the couples all dance at the same time while trying to earn extra points from the judges.
It resembles what traditional ballroom and Latin dance competitions would look like, where there are often many participants on the floor at the same time.
Throughout the Strictly seasons, there have been many variations: like the Lindy hop-a-thon, the Quickstep-a-thon, and a Walz-a-thon. However, the competition was scrapped after Season 16.
As its name suggests, a Samba-thon involves all the remaining contestants dancing the samba, a high-energy Latin American dance that originated in Brazil.
How will the celebrities be scored?
Following their main performances, all the stars will come together to take part in the Samba-thon alongside the rest of the cast.
They’ll all dance at the same time before the judges eliminate them one by one. The first couple eliminated will receive one point, while the second gets two points and so on.
The winner of the Samba-thon is the couple that remains last on the floor, and they’ll receive seven points.
These points are added to the wider scores of the night, so could dramatically impact the scoreboards.
What happened when Strictly last held one?
Strictly’s 2018 dance-a-thon was chaotic, to say the least.
Even the official Strictly account admitted that things didn’t go to plan back then, recently writing on social media: “The last #Strictly dance-a-thon was a hot mess, so it can only get better from here, right?”
Although the show went smoothly, the issue was with the judging afterwards.
Head judge Shirley Ballas’ tablet appeared to freeze, so she couldn’t read the scores as she’d planned - and they had no choice but to resort to pen and paper.
Ballas then named Ashley Roberts and Pasha Kovalev first - even though she was actually meant to be saying who came last in the competition.
Other blunders followed, but the team originally managed to iron things out. Let’s hope this year’s rendition goes a little more smoothly.
