He was dreadful tonight, both his dancing and his mood. Very unprofessional. How can you expect the learner to be good when the teacher doesn't like and has no confidence in his latin dancing.

What a great shame Laila was not partnered with Matthew as I believe she can be an excellent dancer.

Why the hell was he even in the group samba anyway? He stood out like a sore thumb. He never usually does the latin group dances

Sorry hon- just spotted yr thread. Missed it earlier...

I'm sure any other male pro dancer would have got a good performance out of Leila.

Doesnt matter lol. It disapeared of the front page very quickly

The whole thing was a shambles but it was a shame that Laila had to stand there and take all the flak. The judges obviously could not openly criticise Anton's performance as the professional dancer.
I also thought Alesha took a spiteful shot by referring to Laila as a 'drunken rag doll'. Considering she is meant to be on the panel because she 'empathises' with what the celebs go through I would have thought she would have been conscious of the need to make constructive criticism.

Words straight out of my mouth!

He didn't do Laila any favours I must say.

Crikey, doesn't he go on. It was very rude the way he kept talking over Tess when she was trying to talk to camera.

I think a lot of the songs just didn't suit the dances tonight.

he clearly cant teach jive. laila was utterly lost and no confidence
the other profs say their celeb is good even if theyre not but anton was so dismissive
he can't jive either

I agree, it was terrible wasn't it! I also agree that it was on occasion difficult to tell who was meant to be the pro. Laila very graciously took all the criticism for that but I certainly don't think she was the one to blame for that one!

It's unfortunate for her that her Latin is weaker than her ballroom but Anton's weakness at Latin actually makes it look worse.

i agree that his performance tonight was not good (samba included), and also thought his choreography for the cha cha was quite bad. he just doesn't get the latin and it will hurt laila! he needs to ask for help when he needs it. and he needs it badly.

Those were my thoughts exactly. I also thought he should have shown a little humility and shouldered some of the blame, instead of leaving Laila to take all the flak.

He wasn't great. Have a look at him on the YT clip of the Sweet Charity medley a while back - he was the same. Looked like an amateur at times. Ballroom is clearly his forte!

he was out of time as well

He didn't really seem to care about how bad it was, and Laila had to take all the negative feedback. He even cracked a joke about the possibility of being at the bottom of the leaderboard and talked over Tess afterwards, giving the impression that he thought the audience wouldn't take the poor performance seriously. He even talked about next week's samba as if he was confident they'd be voted through however bad the performance was.

Yes, their high marks last week were deserved, but tonight, given the way the voting went, they were uncomfortably close to being in the dance off with Zoe and James - in which case they'd probably have gone.

I also thought he said "Oh sh*t" when the first mark went up which was totally uncalled for. The guy is definitely sailing close to the wind this series and if he doesn't get a semi-final place he only has himself to blame. For the past few years he's got away with bad choreography because of poor partners but, this year we're seeing another side to Anton and tbh it's not very nice. He's become far too big for his boots.

I think it was because Laila forgot it - he had to do something and did a jive which could have been on at a dance in the 1950s instead of the ballroom jive he had choreographed!

Shocking for a professional i thought, i know Anton is no latin expert but for a pro he stinks sorry i dont mind him but lousy springs to mind

In the film before the two of them danced he said she was the worst Jiver he has trained, well im sorry Anton but you are part of the blame, you cant dance it either! Poor Laila.

It was the worst jive of the night, and I thought Laila was slightly better than Anton, the bare chest didn't help last night.

I think the main problem was the music, it was just a bit too quick and made it difficult for Laila to keep up.
But you're right, it was a sloppy effort.

Laila said repeatedly all week that she struggled to pick up the steps and that the jive was too fast for her, she fluffed the routine last night and Anton did the best he could with it after that.

I don't think Anton had a clue what was going on. When your partner loses the plot then what do you do? Carry on with the choreographed routine or try to mirror them for the sake of artistic symmetry?

Strictly freestyle.

Anton was bad with Laila but in the professional group dance, his lack in latin was almost embarrassing.