Latest news with #ItTakesTwo
Wales Online
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Wales Online
Strictly Come Dancing star says 'I'll miss you' as Gorka Marquez pulls out of 2025 series
Strictly Come Dancing star says 'I'll miss you' as Gorka Marquez pulls out of 2025 series Strictly Come Dancing star Gorka Marquez won't have a celebrity partner this year Strictly Come Dancing star Janette Manrara said, "I'll miss you", as Gorka Marquez pulled out of the 2025 series. Fans of the BBC show will remember that Janette was a pro dancer on the programme from 2013 to 2020. She then transitioned to co-hosting the show's popular spin-off, It Takes Two, in 2021, keeping her well and truly within the Strictly family. The much-loved dancing contest is now just weeks away from making a triumphant return to our TV screens, with viewers eagerly awaiting news of which celebrities will be lighting up the ballroom this year. While no celebs have been confirmed for the 2025 series as yet, the broadcaster did announce earlier this year which professional dancers will be returning to the dance floor, reports the Express. Janette Manrara supported her co-star this week (Image: BBC) For the upcoming series, professional dancers Dianne Buswell, Nadiya Bychkova, Amy Dowden, Karen Hauer, Katya Jones, Neil Jones, Nikita Kuzmin, Gorka Marquez and Luba Mushtuk will once again grace the floor. They'll be joined by Jowita Przystal, Johannes Radebe, Aljaz Skorjanec, Kai Widdrington, Nancy Xu, Carlos Gu, Lauren Oakley, Michelle Tsiakkas and Vito Coppola. Alongside the confirmation of the professional line-up, it was also disclosed that two completely new professional dancers will be making their first appearance. The fresh faces have now been announced as So You Think You Can Dance winner Alexis Warr and Julian Caillon from Australia's Dancing With The Stars. Gorka Marquez won't have a celebrity partner this year (Image: BBC) Whilst the roster of professional dancers who will be matched with celebrities on this year's Strictly Come Dancing stays secret, Gorka Marquez has confirmed he won't be amongst them. The dancer has accepted a judging position on Spain's version of the programme, preventing him from taking part in the UK series. Taking to Instagram on Wednesday (August 8), the 34-year-old wrote: "I am happy to announce that I will be back for season two of BAILANDO CON LAS ESTRELLAS as a judge from September." He clarified that owing to the filming timetable, he would not partner with a celebrity on Strictly this year, but would take part in group performances, as well as returning for the closing weeks to cheer on his fellow professionals and their famous partners. Gorka has been a dancer on the show since 2016 (Image: BBC) "As always thank you for all The love and support and remember! Keep dancing!!!" he concluded. Gorka's statement was greeted with a flood of encouragement from his colleagues. Janette Manrara reshared his post on her Instagram Story, commenting: "We'll miss you!" while Jowita Przystal praised him, writing: "Congratulations!!" Johannes Radebe responded with: "Congrats papi," whilst Nikita Kuzmin and Lauren Oakley demonstrated their backing with heart and clapping emojis. Strictly 2024 contestant Tasha Ghori shared her delight: "Congratulations gorka!!!" whilst his latest dance partner Dr Punam Krishan added: "Super proud of you Gorka, huge congratulations." Article continues below Strictly Come Dancing returns to BBC One and BBC iPlayer this autumn
Edinburgh Live
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Edinburgh Live
BBC Strictly Come Dancing's Janette Manrara sends support to co-star after announcement
Our community members are treated to special offers, promotions and adverts from us and our partners. You can check out at any time. More info Strictly Come Dancing star Janette Manrara has sent support to her co-star after a big announcement. Fans of the BBC show will remember that Janette was a pro dancer on the programme from 2013 to 2020. She then transitioned to co-hosting the show's popular spin-off, It Takes Two, in 2021, keeping her well and truly within the Strictly family. The much-loved dancing contest is now just weeks away from making a triumphant return to our TV screens, with viewers eagerly awaiting news of which celebrities will be lighting up the ballroom this year. While no celebs have been confirmed for the 2025 series as yet, the broadcaster did announce earlier this year which professional dancers will be returning to the dance floor, reports the Express. (Image: BBC) For the upcoming series, professional dancers Dianne Buswell, Nadiya Bychkova, Amy Dowden, Karen Hauer, Katya Jones, Neil Jones, Nikita Kuzmin, Gorka Marquez and Luba Mushtuk will once again grace the floor. They'll be joined by Jowita Przystal, Johannes Radebe, Aljaz Skorjanec, Kai Widdrington, Nancy Xu, Carlos Gu, Lauren Oakley, Michelle Tsiakkas and Vito Coppola. Alongside the confirmation of the professional line-up, it was also disclosed that two completely new professional dancers will be making their first appearance. The fresh faces have now been announced as So You Think You Can Dance winner Alexis Warr and Julian Caillon from Australia's Dancing With The Stars (Image: BBC/Ray Burmiston) Whilst the roster of professional dancers who will be matched with celebrities on this year's Strictly Come Dancing stays secret, Gorka Marquez has confirmed he won't be amongst them. The dancer has accepted a judging position on Spain's version of the programme, preventing him from taking part in the UK series. Taking to Instagram on Wednesday (August 8), the 34-year-old wrote: "I am happy to announce that I will be back for season two of BAILANDO CON LAS ESTRELLAS as a judge from September." He clarified that owing to the filming timetable, he would not partner with a celebrity on Strictly this year, but would take part in group performances, as well as returning for the closing weeks to cheer on his fellow professionals and their famous partners. (Image: BBC) "As always thank you for all The love and support and remember! Keep dancing!!!" he concluded. Gorka's statement was greeted with a flood of encouragement from his colleagues. Janette Manrara reshared his post on her Instagram Story, commenting: "We'll miss you!" while Jowita Przystal praised him, writing: "Congratulations!!" Johannes Radebe responded with: "Congrats papi," whilst Nikita Kuzmin and Lauren Oakley demonstrated their backing with heart and clapping emojis. Strictly 2024 contestant Tasha Ghori shared her delight: "Congratulations gorka!!!" whilst his latest dance partner Dr Punam Krishan added: "Super proud of you Gorka, huge congratulations." Strictly Come Dancing returns to BBC One and BBC iPlayer this autumn
Metro
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Battlefield 6 open beta review in progress
The open beta for Battlefield 6 is already in early access but how does it look and play, and can it really become a serious rival to Call Of Duty? EA has a reputation for being many things, but not a risk taker. They can be a little more daring than their reputation suggests – It Takes Two was a very unlikely game for them to back and making Dark Souls the primary influence of your big budget Star Wars game was certainly a choice – but in general they're seen as sensible and cautious to a fault. And yet, at a time when EA Sports FC is looking surprisingly vulnerable, they've bet everything on the success of Battlefield 6. Battlefield predates Call Of Duty by a full year but it only started to get big on consoles with 2008's Battlefield: Bad Company and even then it's always seemed too hardcore for true mass market success. After the unequivocal failure of 2021's Battlefield 2042 it would've been perfectly reasonable to just give up on the franchise, at least for a while, but instead EA has gone all out and tied up four of their most talented studios in making Battlefield 6 and a faintly hinted at Call Of Duty: Warzone equivalent. If Battlefield 6 is a flop we dread to think what will happen to those developers, or EA as a whole, especially as rumours suggest they have seemingly impossible-to-reach goals for the game. But after playing the ongoing open beta suddenly we're more optimistic about the game's success. It's a game that almost everyone is going to find fault with, often in very different ways, but it already feels like a viable alternative to Call Of Duty and that seems to be the whole point. Although there were plenty of sequels afterwards, 2013's Battlefield 4 was make or break for the series and unfortunately for EA it broke. The game was a buggy mess at launch and so even though it was going up against weak link Call Of Duty: Ghosts it never came close to outselling it. Nevertheless, it is Battlefield 3 and 4 that this new game feels most similar to, in terms of its quasi-real-world setting and its attempts to meld different elements of both Battlefield and Call Of Duty into one game. The open beta started on Thursday, August 7, if you had early access, and will continue into the weekend and for another few days later in the month. That means that, so far, we've only had a few hours playing the beta, which naturally does not have all the options of the final release. First impressions are very good though, thanks to the exceptionally good graphics and the series' signature destruction effects. EA has already said that in terms of destruction they've been looking back at Bad Company's approach, where you could flatten almost the entire map, rather than the more controlled effects in the modern games. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Whether that was a technical decision or not has never been clear, but it always seemed a terrible mistake to neuter one of the most important elements of the game. But now every battle is filled with collapsing buildings and explosions that can be seen to do real, physics-based damage to the ground. However, and despite what EA have said, it's not Bad Company level. There are lots of walls and objects that are impossible to destroy and it's not always obvious which ones and why. Sometimes you need bigger ordnance and sometimes there just doesn't seem to be anyway to destroy them at all. Nevertheless, shooting upwards and exploding the floor from underneath a rival team is hugely satisfying, just as it's excitingly terrifying when someone blows up a wall in your face and suddenly you're in desperate firefight with the players on the other side. The sound design is fantastic and it'd be an absolute crime not to play the game with headphones, not just because it's amazingly immersive but because paying careful attention to the soundscape allows you to accurately pinpoint where a firefight is going on, even if you can't see it yet. We suspect that the size of the maps is going to be a key point of disagreement in the coming months, as EA is clearly trying to create a compromise between Battlefield's famously large designs and the fact that for newer players they're so easy to get lost in. The very biggest maps in the game aren't in the beta but it's certainly true that the current ones are a bit on the small size for the Conquest game mode, without being ruinously so. The fundamental problem preventing Battlefield from becoming truly mass market is that for a new player the average match involves wandering around aimlessly, never seeing anyone else, and then getting shot from a mile away by a sniper you never knew was there. Especially because all the tanks were already taken by the time you got there, and the jets are too hard to fly. That's the classic Battlefield experience for a lot of people and it's hard to tell from this beta to what degree that's changed, because at the moment no one knows what they're doing – which is going to be very different to a couple of months after launch. Competent matchmaking should compensate to a degree, but it's also hard to tell how that's working right now, because the game has so little data to work with. What we can say is that we've never been particularly good at Battlefield and yet we never felt that we were getting clowned on in the beta, with plenty of cover for most of the maps and at least some other players visible at all times. We are concerned about the gunplay though, as while it was never going to be as good as Call Of Duty there's a worrying lack of auto-aim when using a joypad. More Trending Maybe we have to start fiddling about in the options, but the default seems very off-putting for new players, whether they've played Battlefield before or not. And while it's also a key part of the game design, the time to kill (TTK) for most people is going to be miniscule, with one shot deaths being commonplace. That is compensated for somewhat by the pace of the action being faster than the Battlefield norm. The COD-ification of Battlefield has been a point of contention for years though and while Battlefield 6 does seem to be a sensible compromise between most factors, the problem is it's never going to please anyone 100%. Which is inevitably going to lead to a lot of increasingly unhinged internet arguments. At the moment though, while everything is new and exciting, it's all good fun. Familiar and yet taking full advantage of modern hardware, in a way that feels like a major step forward for the franchise, if not the genre as a whole. If you end up playing it this weekend, or later in the month, we think you're really going to enjoy it. How anyone is going to feel about it in the weeks after though we really couldn't say. Formats: PlayStation 5 (previewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PCPrice: £69.99Publisher: EADeveloper: DICE, Ripple Effect Studios, Motive Studio, and Criterion GamesRelease Date: 10th October 2025 Age Rating: 16 Email gamecentral@ leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader's Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. For more stories like this, check our Gaming page. MORE: Ninja Gaiden 4 hands-on preview – the return of PlatinumGames MORE: Starfield has been redeemed – by turning it into a huge Star Wars RPG MORE: The Nintendo Direct Indie World was another dud – except for the last 30 seconds
Time of India
04-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
BoA's Magical 25-Year Ride: Time to Get 'Crazier' with Her New Beats!
From Teen Star to Worldwide Icon: BoA 's Thrilling Ride Hey, music lovers and rhythm chasers! Picture starting at 14, releasing hits that rock the globe, and still dominating stages after 25 years. That's BoA, the 'Star of Asia' illuminating K-pop since her 2000 debut 'ID; Peace B'. Jump to today - August 4, 2025 - she's unleashing her 11th album 'Crazier'! This isn't just music; it's a 25-year bash full of nostalgic and fresh beats. BoA expanded beyond Korea, conquering Japan in 2001 and sparking K-pop's international surge. Her flawless live performances - killer dances with spot-on vocals - led to two million-selling albums there, showcasing her unbeatable spirit. As per Oricon reports, albums like 'Valenti' each sold over a million copies, inspiring countless artists. In a fast-changing trend world, BoA's endurance is like your go-to pal with the perfect playlist. Unpacking 'Crazier': Tracks to Pump Up Your Playlist Let's crack open this album gem! With 11 songs, the title 'Crazier' leads the charge, ramping up energy like an unexpected storm. BoA shines with self-written tracks 'It Takes Two' and 'How Could', evolving from pop sensation to composing pro. Don't miss the fan dedication 'Clockwise' for her devoted 'Jumping BoA' squad who've been there forever. SM Entertainment dubs it a "key milestone" summing up her musical history, linking feelings via dance hits and tender ballads. Imagine switching from energetic grooves to soul-stirring tunes in seconds. For stats fans, though new sales are pending, her past Japanese works sold millions combined, per Oricon. Fans are hyped - it's got moods from party anthems to thoughtful vibes that tug at heartstrings. BoA Shares the Scoop: 25 Years of Passion and Connection BoA keeps it genuine. She says, "25 years doesn't hit differently, but sometimes it's like, 'Already?'" Returning with a full album five years post-'Better', she's eager to reveal fresh vocal styles. "I aimed to show unseen sides to longtime supporters - hope it clicks!" That real bond sets her apart; in a flashy biz, she's the savvy mentor blending wisdom with catchy tunes. Beyond singing, she's a director, producer, and show judge shaping new talents. Fun tidbit: Her Japanese influence opened doors for today's K-pop stars, creating cross-cultural vibes like a worldwide reunion. If you're in your 20s navigating life hustles, BoA's tale proves early starts and authenticity lead to massive victories.
Daily Mirror
02-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Strictly's Katya Jones gives major love update as she shares baby dreams
Single dancer on finding the man of her dreams and returning to the BBC show When it comes to finding love, Strictly Come Dancing star Katya Jones is an eternal optimist. The Russian star still hopes to waltz off with the man of her dreams… and become a mum. Katya, 36, says: 'I might meet somebody today. You get up and you never know who you might meet. I've got to look nice… I'm always ready and open.' But the dancer thinks some men may be too scared to approach her. During her 10 years on the hit BBC show, Katya has made headlines both and off the dancefloor. It comes as former Strictly stars Helen Skelton and Gethin Jones split as he joins a notorious dating app on a lads' holiday. In 2017, Katya lifted the famous Glitterball trophy when she won the series with Holby City actor Joe McFadden. And three years later, she made history when she was paired with boxer Nicola Adams, becoming the first same-sex couple to ever compete in the show. But she has had her fair share of scandal, too. Last year, a 'private joke' with her opera singer partner Wynne Evans backfired. And in 2018, Katya was pictured kissing her dance partner, comedian Seann Walsh, in the street. The clinch – which came after a boozy afternoon – ended her six-year marriage to fellow Strictly dancer Neil Jones and also wrecked Seann's relationship with his then-girlfriend. Katya has said of the kiss: 'I wasn't thinking and it was a one-off mistake after drinks.' Since then, the dancer has been linked to property mogul and former footballer William Abbotts. The pair were said to have enjoyed a few dates in 2023 before calling it a day. Katya now believes men are too shy to even talk to her, let alone embark on a relationship. She says: 'Us women have fought to be so independent and strong and do our own thing, that it might send confusing messaging to them, like, 'Can I approach or can I not?' So, I totally understand why they're being hesitant sometimes, but I'm open and ready to be approached.' Despite being on dating apps, including the A-list favourite Raya, Katya is yet to strike gold – but she is still hopeful her Prince Charming will sweep her off her feet. Inspired by her good friend and It Takes Two host Janette Manrara, who welcomed daughter Lyra with fellow Strictly dancer Aljaz Škorjanec in 2023, Katya says she would love to start a family one day. 'I would like to have kids with someone who I believe could be a good father but I've got nieces I can spend my energy on right now, or some of my friends' children, like Janette. Seeing how she does everything and is a mother as well is really inspiring. It just shows that you can do it all if you put your mind to it.' Hearing about women who have frozen their eggs so they can have children in later life is food for thought for Katya. She says: 'I've spoken to women who have done it… I didn't hear about it until two years ago, which is quite surprising really. However, I still have faith in meeting someone naturally. That would be lovely.' Katya is still good friends with her ex Neil, 43, who is dad to daughter Havana with his fiancee, former Love Islander Chyna Mills. Neil and Katya often work closely together on Strictly – and even share their dogs. Katya says of the arrangement: 'They had them for some time. Now it's my turn. "We're absolutely still on good terms. We knew each other since we were 18 and started dancing. We lived a life together… it was me and him against the world, chasing our dreams. We were the only people there for each other so of course there is a much more profound connection there. You can't just throw that away.' Katya, who grew up in Saint Petersburg, started dancing when she was just six years old. She was encouraged to reach for the stars by her mum and dad, Tatiana and Andrey, so trained in both ballroom and Latin, as well as gymnastics. Katya has now thrown herself back into rehearsals for Strictly and the upcoming series will be her 10th. Looking ahead to this year's show, Katya says: 'I've done it for 10 years and had all sorts of characters. I'd like to think that I've done it well. So, whoever I get, I am just there to give them a great time.' Katya has also recently returned from Belgium, where she was a judge on Dancing with the Stars. She says: 'I've been in this [industry] for so long… I've been on one side as a choreographer, as a creative and a professional dancer. I've stood there being criticised and I feel like my past experience with Neil as well – being world champions – I've got all the credentials to fall back now. I know what they are going through.' As she gets ready to return to the dancefloor once again, Katya says that she is currently in the best shape of her life and is embracing being in her 30s. 'I've loved my years after 30,' she says. 'Now I feel the most fit and the most healthy. It's only now that I can do the splits in my 30s. I had to give up gymnastics when I was little because I was so inflexible but with consistency, I'm finding things that I love and enjoy doing. 'I'm into my padel [a racquet sport] and boxing. I love movement so I'm feeling on top of the world, to be honest.'
