Strictly has never seen Salsas top the weekly leaderboard back-to-back before as has happened now with Layton & Nikita scoring 39 in Week 5 followed by Ellie & Vito’s 38 at Halloween. To honour this success, we look at Salsas on the show and – guess what – topping the leaderboard with a Salsa looks like a good omen for getting all the way to the Final.

The data: 148 Salsas have been danced but 26 of these have been in Quarter-Finals, Semi-Finals or Finals; because these weeks tend to see much higher scoring dances (or repeated routines in Finals), this group has been excluded. This leaves 122 Salsas in other weeks. Scores for routines judged by 3/5 judges are adjusted for comparison.

Salsa in the early Series

Salsa was introduced in Series 4 back in 2006, with the first ever routine danced by Louisa Lytton & Vincent to open Week 5; they scored 29 points, and the format of the show (where each couple danced only one of two possible dances in early weeks) meant that four other couples performed a Salsa that evening. This included Mark Ramprakash & Karen’s routine to ‘Hot, Hot, Hot’ by Arrow, a seminal Strictly Salsa (36 points) which later scored 40 in the Series Final when they were crowned Champions. The original routines from Series 6 are not available but here is Mark & Karen returning to dance their winning Salsa again in 2009.

Salsas were also performed at other times, but for the next five Series there was always a week where half the couples danced a Salsa and half danced a ballroom routine (either Viennese Waltz or Foxtrot). The average score for Salsas in these weeks is consistently below the average for the ballroom routine (with the exception of Series 7 Week 4) highlighting possibly the more difficult technique involved.

In these 6 weeks, 3 leaderboards were topped by the ballroom routine, 1 by the Salsa routine and 2 jointly by each style. From Series 10, Salsas were mixed into different weeks of the show and could be performed at any time (but never in Week 1).

Salsa scores

The 122 Salsas here scored between 12 and 40 points, with an overall average score of 28.3. The lowest scoring Salsa was performed by Ann Widdecombe & Anton in Week 2 of Series 8 to ‘Mambo Italiano’ where Craig awarded them a 1.

There are 6 Salsa routines that have scored a perfect 40, but only one of these was performed in a ‘normal’ show week outside of Quarter-, Semi- and Final weeks; this was Abbey Clancy & Aljaž’s Saturday Night Fever-themed routine in Week 10 of Series 11, described by Darcey Bussell as a “mesmerising…five-star routine”.
So, another high-scoring Salsa performed by a couple who went on to win…

Breaking these 122 scores into low-, middle- and high-scoring routines results in the majority of Salsas (57.4%) achieving a mid-range score of 21-31 as we’d expect but just over a third scoring highly (32 points or more). 8.2% received low scores (20 points or less) which is less than some other routines (e.g. 12.4% of Sambas and 11.3% of Jives score 20 or less).

Salsa is one of only 3 dances for which male celebrities have a higher average score than female celebs. Though close, male celebs score an average of 28.7 for their Salsas, compared to 28.0 for female celebs; the only other styles for which this is also true are Argentine Tango and Couple’s Choice. (Thanks to James Ross for this interesting Salsa stat!)

Leaderboard-topping Salsas

Ellie was thrilled to have achieved the highest scoring Salsa in Halloween week on the show (but does she know there have only been 4?) We think it’s more exciting to look at how well couples who have topped the leaderboard dancing a Salsa tend to go on to do in the competition overall.

Until this Series, a Salsa had topped the leaderboard on only 7 occasions (though this was by 8 couples as in Week 2 of Series 8, Pamela & James and Scott & Natalie were joint top each with Salsas, scoring 32). Of those 8 partnerships, 2 pairs reached the Semi-Final (Jake & Janette and Scott & Natalie), 5 out of 8 (62.5%) became Finalists – 4 of whom became Champions (50%). Only one pair, John Barnes and Nicole did not make it into the very later stages of the competition.

With Layton & Nikita as well as Ellie & Vito that makes 9 leaderboard-topping Salsas; this might be very good news for these two partnerships. So is a leaderboard-topping Salsa one secret to Strictly success? Obviously lots of couples have won without one in their dance resumé, but from the data it certainly looks like achieving one is linked to some success on the show overall. We’ll have to wait for this year’s Final to find out!

Our favourite Salsas

An article about Salsa on Strictly wouldn’t be complete without a mention of some of our favourite routines. The joyfulness, exuberance and technical brilliance of Hamza & Jowita’s 2022 routine is breath-taking (look at those lifts), but for sheer bonkers-ness and Strictly magic we love Ed & Katya’s 2016 routine (score 25). Remember this one anyone?

Photo credits: BBC embeddable video thumbnails from YouTube