Donkeys and me: Strictly star and animal advocate, Flavia Cacace

How would you describe your career?

I’m most known as a professional dancer from the TV show Strictly Come Dancing, but I had a whole dancing career. I was a ballroom and Latin professional dancer representing the UK with Vincent, my dance partner. We’ve been dancing together for thirty years this year!

We won lots of UK championships in various disciplines. Then we watched a black-and-white movie, on VHS, about a tango dancer based in Paris. We fell in love with the Argentine tango. It was through our tango teacher that we were recommended for the TV show ‘Dance Fever’. This was the start of our TV career.

The same producer was also doing ‘Strictly Come Dancing’, so we very naturally moved to choreographing on Strictly. Then they asked us to do a performance on the show, and the year after they asked us to join as professional dancers. Then that was the next seven years!

For eight years after that, we toured the UK with four different theatre productions. We were fortunate enough to experience what it was like to be resident at theatres for a week, which is now unheard of.

We did loads of West End runs and got an Olivier nomination for one of our shows. The theatre is probably the part of my career that is closest to my heart. I never thought when I started dancing we’d be performing on a stage in the West End!

In 2018, we took a break to do our own things, with dancing ticking over in the background. I moved to a smallholding in Devon - put life above career - and that’s where I’ve been for the last six years.

Now I’m doing some corporate events and performances again, and there’s talk of a tour next year. I feel ready and it is definitely thanks to having taken some time to care for myself, mentally and physically.

Being surrounded by nature, the connection with animals and having a lot of outdoor time, suddenly my brain went, “I’m not done yet!”

It was a big shift from theatre to moving to Devon. How did that happen?

The eight years of touring were the most intense part of my career. We were fortunate enough to tour pretty much non-stop and had very few breaks. By year eight, I was absolutely exhausted. I’d been living out of a suitcase for months and I was just crossing paths with my husband Jimi, who was at home holding the fort with our two dogs, our boys.

In the last year, my body started to feel it but it wasn’t coming from injuries, it was from my mental state. I just knew I needed to take time out.

When I did have time off, me and Jimi would take the boys to Cornwall. We’d go out of season and do long walks on the beach. We loved the ruggedness and beauty. So in 2018 we did property viewings, but we didn’t have the courage yet.

I did a personal training diploma, and we set up an online fitness and dance business. It took us a year to put together and we launched two weeks before COVID. We had set it up for members to pay for high quality streaming of fitness classes, and suddenly everyone was on Zoom giving away free classes.

After investing so much time and money, we realised it wasn’t going anywhere. So with the combination of that and COVID, we thought, “If we’re ever going to do this, now is the time.”

Why a smallholding?

I’ve always had an attraction and love for animals. I didn’t have them growing up but my parents came from families who had animals. My mum had chickens and a rooster who was her best friend. My dad had sheep. So going back generations, we have had that lifestyle.

Dogs have always been my thing - I couldn’t live without them - and I’ve been a patron of a dog foundation, run by my friend Jo Cottrell, for years. Then we got our two dogs.

We ended up in Devon, which is still accessible to London for work. This property was a wild card - it was a barn conversion with seven acres and animal paddocks. It already had a setup for chickens, a goat shelter and a polytunnel. We ended up with much more than we needed.

We set up the ‘Our Life at the Barn’ Instagram account just because we wanted to record everything. We started with zero followers - it was more a memory of everything for us, and for our friends and families to see the craziness of what we were doing.

When we got here, we rolled our sleeves up and turned into fully-fledged farmers. We fell right into it, like we’d done it all our lives.

What did your ‘Life at the Barn’ involve?

We definitely didn’t move here to sit back and pay other people to do the work for us. This place had been empty for about nine months. I look back now and go, “Wow. We were mad”. But we got out in any weather in wellies, cutting back trees, all sorts of things.

We asked the local farmer to graze his sheep in the paddocks. Then I started researching. I looked into different breeds and came across the Ouessant - a rare breed and the smallest in the world. They needed people to help get the numbers up and there was someone half an hour away who had a flock. We fell in love and got our first three boys. And then, of course, it’s like with any animal - you get three and you end up with 23! We added four girls, then we ended up with Ernie the ram so we could lamb, as you do.

We lambed for two years. So we had the whole experience - lambing, naming all the little sheep, doing all the paperwork, registration, tagging. It was really full on and when we moved we said we would not get any animals until we’d tidied the place up. Within four months we had 12 chickens and three sheep.

At most we had 45 chickens, 18 rare breed sheep, our boys - the dogs - and our two lovely cats, and we had our polytunnel ridiculously full of veg and fruit. We had a little stall outside our house. We sold our eggs and all the extra vegetables. We also made wool, we’ve got scarves, hats and gloves!

It is beautiful but when you’re doing it yourself, it is a huge amount of work. I have so much respect for farmers and people who keep animals the correct way.

Now you’ve moved out of The Barn. What led to that decision?

It was getting harder to maintain the two parts of my life - teaching and travelling for dance gigs, and looking after everything at the barn. I really started to feel like I wanted to dance again.

I was feeling fit and healthy, and mentally in a good space. In the same way we knew it was right to come here five years ago, it felt like it was the right time to go back.

The hardest part of the decision was rehoming the animals. We went really quiet on socials because if we were going to do this then we needed to be 110% happy with where they were going.

I’ve had so many tears. The homes they went to are amazing and we made sure that they all went in groups. I am in contact with them, and I get videos and photos.

What’s next for the ‘Our Life at the Barn’ platform?

When we decided that we were going to move, I didn’t want to revert back to how my career was before. I have discovered myself over the last five years. I have a really strong connection with nature and animals.

I could live in a field with sheep and be quite happy, and not many dancers can do that! I have to find a balance. I will go back to my dancing, which I love, but I have to continue to have that connection and a more balanced life for it to be sustainable.

We have quite a big following with ‘Our Life at the Barn’. It would be such an incredible waste to let that go, so we want to use the account as a voice to do something positive, make some small changes, get messages out there.

It’s a really good excuse for me to visit lots of animals and sanctuaries, and get my animal fix, but also help people. Our followers can still see the fluffy animals and our dogs and cats, but they can see other animals, maybe new species, new breeds, any kind of animal really.

Then I received an email from World Animal Protection asking if I’d like to help with a campaign and potentially become a patron. It was perfect timing, so I’ve joined forces with them.

I’d been to The Donkey Sanctuary at Sidmouth with Jimi for one of our birthdays. It was a really rainy day, but we had the best time ever. The staff were incredible. We had some great food at the cafe, and we got to see a few donkeys and fell in love with them.

At the time we already had the sheep and the chickens, and we ended up going through the whole process to potentially rehome and become donkey ‘Guardians’.

We read the book, did the online course, had someone visit, and we got approved. But I had a lot of work away and teaching, and we knew from the course how much care donkeys needed. It made us stop and think. So we took a step back and stuck with the sheep and chickens.

But after I joined World Animal Protection, The Donkey Sanctuary reached out and asked me to go on a behind-the-scenes tour. I told them I’d love to, but we should make more use of it - use my socials to help. We’ve done a few videos so far, but I’m going back in February to do a mini documentary on the rehoming process.

The ‘Our Life at the Barn’ platform is going to be a voice for all animals. I’m not going to limit myself to anything in particular. I use makeup for my shows, so I’ve done some promotion about Leaping Bunny makeup.

We just rehomed a dog from the Dog Trouble Foundation through my socials. It’s little things like that that really make the last five years worthwhile and give it a purpose. I am there as a platform for people to tap into, so I can share messages with my followers.