Demonstrations

Vito Coppola, Professional Dancer & Celebrity Masterchef 2024

Where:

Outer Bailey Demonstration Stage - Outer Bailey

When:

14th September 2024
2:00 pm to 2:45 pm

At the age of 10, Vito Coppola was the Italian National Dance Champion.

By 12 he had won the German Open Championship, the first Italian in history to do so.

By 16 he won the most important competition in the world, the Blackpool Junior at the iconic Blackpool Tower.

And by the age of 28 having worked consistently hard, clocking up an estimated 30,000 hours of dancing he was in the Top 8 dancers in the world.

And now, as a 31-year-old, Vito is celebrating the rewards of more hard work having taken home the 2023 BBC1 Strictly Come Dancing Glitterball Trophy.

 

Born in Eboli, Salerno (Italy) to a huge family (his Nonna one of 11, and his Grandfather one of 23), he and his younger brother Jonathan grew up on an idyllic family farm growing their own food and produce.

Vito began to dance at the age of 7, in his father’s dance school. Both his parents were athletes and encouraged him to compete. He started in local competitions, worked his way up to Nationals, eventually becoming a three-time World Championship finalist and European Cup Winner. Once he had worked his way into the World’s Top 10 he set his sights on a new career “I decided to start a new chapter of my life, as a performer and choreographer”.

During his career as a Top Italian athlete, an intelligent Coppola kept up his studies, graduating from Naples University in 2020 in "Sport Training Activity Science” (The cognitive and behavioural approach and treatment for performance-induced anxiety in the agonistic sector). He speaks fluent English, Russian and Spanish.

He started his TV career in 2021, as a Pro dancer and teacher on the sixteenth series of Italian dance competition “Ballando con le Stelle” (Dancing with the Stars), ultimately winning the competition with the singer Arisa. He went onto work on the Italian version of “The Masked Singer” as a leading dancer before landing a much coveted role as a professional on “Strictly Come Dancing”, arguably the UK’s biggest TV show. He was paired with singer and presenter Fleur East and received the first perfect score of the series, finishing as runner-up in 2022.

In 2023 Vito, together with his celebrity dance partner, actress Ellie Leach, won the series and lifted the Glitterball Trophy. “What a fantastic feeling it was to win the series, having come so close the previous year, and of course to see Ellie become the youngest ever winner in the history of Strictly Come Dancing”.

Using his new found celebrity profile for good, Vito began working to raise money for charities such as Spread Your Wings, MacMillan Cancer Support and Tias Crown. He will headline several charitable events in the coming year and as a real foodie, look out for him on 'Celebrity Masterchef,' which will be on our screens very soon.