Dance partners for over two decades, world champions, Strictly favourites and West End stage stars Vincent and Flavia fuse together Ballroom, Latin, and Argentine tango to give you a performance that smoulders with desire.

Lauren Foster caught up with them ahead of their new show Tango Moderno...

You’re bringing your Tango Moderno tour to Birmingham’s New Alexandra Theatre this autumn. Can you tell us a little bit about what to expect?
F: This is our fourth show, and every time we put a show together we want the audience to see something not expected, not the same thing that we’ve done before. It was very hard this time, as so much choreography, so many stories and so many ideas have already been done, but we decided to go down the modern route, hence the title Tango Moderno. We thought we’d be a bit more up to date, have a bit more modern music that people will recognise from the radio and so on. We’ve set it in a city that can be anywhere in the world, so it’s up to the audience to visualise where they want that to be. The different thing with it is that normally we’re characters within the story, but this time we thought we’d take a step away from that and actually narrate the story. We have an urban poet who’s also going to be our singer, and together with him, we’re going to help narrate. It’s not really one story, it’s going to be lots of small stories that start in Act One and are finished off in Act Two.

Your previous production, The Last Tango, was due to be your last. What made you decide to produce and tour a brand new show?
V: Our shows are big shows that literally take months to put together. Every time we’re about to attack a new one, we always say, ‘This is the last one, no more!’ because it’s so much hard work. The pressure increases year by year because people have seen it and people love it, so when the producer comes along - and of course we do love what we do, don’t get me wrong - and says, ‘I think you should do a new show’, we’re thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, we need to think of something else to do that we haven’t done so far’. We never said we were going to retire, but we are quite successful, we do sell lots of tickets, there are lots of people who love to come and see us, and even after a couple of months off, you think, ‘Oh my gosh, I miss that, I miss being on stage’. It’s kind of like a drug. It’s something you’ve obviously loved and something you know, so it’s really hard to all of a sudden stop. We make people happy, we make people cry - there are so many emotions that it’s very hard just to say, ‘That’s it’. We’re still quite young.

F: I think it’s easy to say when we’re in rehearsal and preparation for a show that we’re not going to do it again because there’s so much pressure and you just want to do a good job. The more shows you do, the more you worry that the next one isn’t going to be as good, so you have to ask whether you want to put yourself through that again or move on to other things.

V: We push ourselves to the limit and perform every show and if it’s our last. It’s not easy - we’re very hard on ourselves.

You were UK Professional Ten Dance champions from 2002 to 2006, World Argentine Tango Show champions in 2005 and 2006 and UK Ballroom champions for several years. Do you have a favourite dance style?
V: I won Rear Of The Year as well. And so did Flavia.

F: That came as a complete surprise!

F: For the last couple of years it would be the Argentine tango. As you get older, it’s an increasingly comfortable style for the body. Latin and ballroom are great. Latin goes with being quite young and bubbly - skimpy outfits, holiday time and so on. Ballroom is beautiful and elegant, very classical, so I still enjoy doing that, but with the tango, there’s an element of it which is incredibly natural - so now, for me, that is the most pleasurable style to do. It’s less created, less ‘put together’ - you can dance it anywhere, wear what you want; it’s less orchestrated.

You’ve been dance partners for over two decades now. How did that come about?
V: I was doing really well in Italy.

F: You should have stayed!

V: I should have stayed, you’re right! My mum and dad were always there for me. Every week they were driving five hours to take me to see dance teachers for lessons and then driving five hours back. They did that for so many years, and then my long-term dance partner decided she didn’t want to carry on anymore. The best country in the world to do ballroom and Latin dancing is England - in London - so my parents advised me to go to London. They do love me, don’t get me wrong, but it made sense. Where I'm from in South Italy, there weren’t any good dance partners, so I would have had to train one, and to do that from the start would’ve taken so long. When I moved here, I tried with three different partners, and then I found Flavia. We’re both Italian, the dark look, the same height. I remember the faces of our teachers when we did a trial. They were mesmerised and said it was like a partnership made in heaven. So that’s it, that’s how it started. For many years then it was about getting better and better and competing in competition after competition. That’s how it all began.

With touring comes a lot of travelling, as well as the mental and physical strain on your body. What coping mechanisms do you put in place to ensure you’re fit to dance night after night?
F: I think everyone is very different. Some people will get up early and go to the gym, others rest more during the day. I have to have a bath after the show, that’s the first thing I do. It helps relax the muscles and helps me to fall asleep. You finish at 9/9.30pm, and by the time you’ve got back to the hotel, you’re really awake - your adrenaline is pumping and there’s no way you can quickly relax and get to sleep. I lie in the bath, have some food and that really helps me to fall asleep eventually. Sports massages too, I have those regularly. You kind of learn to know what your body needs.

V: Some of us like to go shopping.

F: Yeah, you need some mental therapy.

V: Knowing that we have to perform, you can’t really go crazy. Sometimes, even if a performance is at 7.30pm, we’ll meet there at 3pm because we have nothing else to do. We just spend the afternoon in the theatre, just getting in the mood.

You were dancers on BBC 1’s Strictly Come Dancing for seven years. Would you ever consider going back?
V: I don’t think they'd take us back! It’s been a while now and they’ve got all these beautiful young dancers.

F: They have asked us back - every year they’ve asked us back, which has been really lovely. I don’t ever believe in going backwards, though. It was something that we did so solidly for seven years. It was kind of our life and that was it - I don’t see the positive in going back. It’s like going back to an old job or something - it’s probably never going to be as good. The dancers are different, it’s still a great show, and I'm not saying that they’re any better or any worse, but for us, it’s not the time that we were there, so I don’t think it would be the same experience. There are so many other things we want to do and achieve, and there wouldn’t be any benefit. We’ve always felt very lucky that they ask us back.

What would your dream project be?
V: A film! Making a movie. We’re trying our hardest to make it happen. It would be the cherry on the cake. It would be a nice way to move into something new. We’ve done TV, we’ve done theatre, now we want to do film. Not necessarily as performers or actors, but just to be involved in some shape or form, as choreographers or directors or so on.