Strictly star after cancer ordeal: "I've been given a new chance at life" - Eastbourne date

For Amy it signals her comeback from cancer; for Carlos it’s about finding his true self in this country after moving from China. They are promising a powerful and passionate show touching on all forms of dance and offering the full range of emotion.

Dates in the area include Saturday, March 22 at Eastbourne’s Congress Theatre; and Tuesday, March 25 at Guildford’s G Live.

“After the last few years I am definitely a new version of myself,” says Amy. “I'm so proud to have overcome what I have. Not everybody with a cancer diagnosis gets another shot at life. And I'm just determined to grab life and become a better and stronger human being. I've been given a new chance at life. Once you've been diagnosed with cancer you will never be the same human being again. You see life very differently. I've been through a lot. I went through chemo and I had dance taken away from me. But I've been given a new opportunity now, a new upper body, and you realise what is really important and that's when you are well and healthy you've got to get out there and you've got to be the best version of yourself that you can possibly be. I am determined to be who I am. I don't want to be Amy who had cancer. I want to be Amy the dancer. I want to be a better person, a better dancer. I'm grateful for every sunset and every sunrise now I know that just with a click of your fingers everything can change. So that's why in this show I say I'm reborn. I want to take people through that journey. It's the most personal dance show I've ever done but it's definitely not going to be sad. It's going to be going through all the emotions including great joy and it's going to be about escapism. It is going to be a fantastic fast-paced show and I want to celebrate what I've been through and the friendship that I have with Carlos on the journey ahead.”

Carlos is relishing the prospect of it all too: “This has got so much depth in the title. The reason we made it REBORN is because it is both our stories and it is representative of my own life experience and what I have been through especially moving to the UK all the way from China and getting a completely new work environment and TV and everything feeling so strange to me. That was 2022, July, just after the pandemic. I just knew in the deep inside of myself that I wanted to move to the UK. I travelled to the UK back 15 years ago. I learned to dance here and I just felt that I had a very special relationship with his country and wanted to come back. Every time I got on the plane from China and landed in the UK I felt happy. I just felt this weird connection with this country. I feel like China is my country but I feel like London is my home. I feel a sense of belonging here, just the landscape and the architecture and I just feel so happy here.

“And it's about being yourself. In China I could not really be my own identity. The queer community is much more open here. Because of the environment I was in in China I couldn't really speak out about what was in my brain because of the culture, because of the environment, because of the work but now I really do have much more opportunity to speak out and I'm much more accepting of myself. It's just magic. It's wonderful to be in that space. So I feel that I'm reborn from my career and dancing but also as a person in terms of acceptance and just being a better version of myself and feeling this is part of my story and part of Amy's story as well. And I just love Amy's family too. I call Amy's mother mama!”