Strictly Come Dancing will return to screens later this year, and one of the BBC show’s alleged new dancers has announced her split from her dance partner of seven years
Strictly’s reported new professional dancer Maddie Ingoldsby has announced her split from her dance partner, just months before her BBC debut.
The 21-year-old dancing champ has announced that she and Mark Chilcote have decided to part ways after seven years together. The pair took to Instagram with an emotional joint post soundtracked to Harry Styles’ 2017 tear-jerker, Sign of the Times.
In the lengthy caption, Maddie and Mark wrote: “The final bow to the end of our partnership. After the most extraordinary seven years of our lives, we have made the incredibly difficult decision to bring our partnership to an end. Some endings don’t arrive because our passion has faded; they arrive because life asks us to grow in new directions.”
She continued: “Our partnership has been our greatest teacher and our greatest treasure. It has challenged us to find strength in one another, and opened up the world to us in ways we couldn’t have dreamed possible, performing on countless stages across twenty countries.
“Dance has been our language to express what words never could… We never danced to simply win. We danced to tell our story, and we hope that somewhere along the way, our story became a small part of yours.”
The joint post celebrated their many achievements, including eight world championship titles and three major championships: Internationals, UK Open, and British Open.
The post concluded: “Our story will live on in hearts and in memory, and with the end of one chapter, a new one awaits each of us. Mark is in search of a new dance partnership, while Maddie is putting a pause on her competitive dancing.”
This came just days after Maddie’s addition to the Strictly pro line-up was reported by The Sun, which would make her the second-youngest in the show’s history, after the 2004 premiere, which included Chloe Hewitt, then 20.
The new pro has been competing since she was 11 with her Latin and ballroom partner, Mark, 26. Maddie has graced the Strictly stage before when she was just 11, as part of a routine with the star-studded troupe on the BBC show.
This comes after a major shake-up in which beloved pros Karen Hauer, 44, Nadiya Bychkova and Luba Mushtuk, both 36, Gorka Marquez, 35, and Michelle Tsiakkas, 30, were brutally axed as part of a major overhaul of Strictly Come Dancing for the 2026 series.
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