It’s Monday again guys and this weekend we’ve been enjoying the 5th week of Strictly! 🤩
One thing we’ve heard a lot of our customers talk about is just how good Strictly is this year, and how there are so many great couples in the running to win.
This week we saw three couples achieve a coveted “10!”, so we asked our Pro’s if they agreed and did those couples indeed deserve a 10?
⭐️John & Johannes - (9, 9, 10, 10) Charleston
John and Johannes have managed to create great and believable characterisation in all the different styles they’ve performed in the competition so far. Charleston was no different and clearly this playful style was right up their street. At the beginning of the routine I thought a few nerves showed in John’s performance. Slightly shaky on the footwork, less sharp on his turns and a few missed hand connections. But these nerves soon settled down and by the end he delivered a fantastic job of the Charleston. Credit needs to be given to the tough physical nature of some of the lifts and tricks, all performed excellently. In addition this couple adopt a lot of side by side work into their routines which again we saw tonight, and is very typical of a Charleston. However this makes the celebrity directly comparable to the pro, hence why a lot of other couples avoid it. It’s great to see John meeting the challenge of dancing next to his pro and by no means falling short! Well done John, 10’s fully deserved. - Rosie
⭐️Rose & Giovanni (9, 10, 9, 9) Viennese Waltz
I absolutely loved this dance and thought Rose’s scores were very well deserved. Rose gave such a classy performance and the style of the dance definitely played to her strengths as an actress. She transitioned from the opening acting section into the dancing with such ease and confidence. She also started dancing and then moved into her frame whilst dancing the natural turns which can be quite tricky and hard to correct if it goes wrong or a bit wonky! Viennese waltz is a repetitive rotational dance with natural and reverse turns and occasionally pivots and fleckerls. Rose danced these consistently without ever compromising her frame, headline or position. I think the lack of complicated choreography is what stopped her from gaining 10s from the other judges, in comparison to what some of the other celebrities had learnt this week. With the consistency she showed throughout her dancing and commitment to the character I think she actually deserved a couple of extra 10s. Let’s see what happens next week? - Nic
⭐️AJ & Kai (8, 8, 10, 9) Argentine Tango
I was very interested to see AJ and Kai’s performance for the Argentine tango since it was mentioned last week. As the resident teacher in Argentine Tango for Rise I was looking forward to seeing how this couple would adopt this intricate style of dancing. I felt personally that this wasn’t their best dance unfortunately. Not to say their dancing was bad, they had fantastic characterisation and how they adopted the mood between the couple would have definitely been reflected in their scores. There was a good use of some Argentine figures, the use of flicking actions etc. However as it was designed as a powerful performance, this feature was what I saw most of in the dancing and it lacked the subtlety and nuance that Argentine tango presents. I would have perhaps scored them an 8 on this outing which is to reflect both the very good energy and characterisation as well as incorporation of some Argentine figures, but because the only time I saw that aspect of subtlety was when they both had their arms around each other. It would be difficult for me to say that this defines a good quality of Argentine tango. So not their best dance, but definitely not the worst of the evening. The Halloween special should definitely be an interesting one. - Ian