i do, ive recently been watching dancing with the stars and there freestyles are great. they have lots of variety and different styles compared to ours.

what do you lot think ?

I agree. I too was impressed by the freestyles on DWTS. I remember watching the year that Apollo won, can't remember his surname. He is an olympic athlete. His freestyle was brilliant. It has aspects of hip-hop, lifts and it just looked like fun. The freestyles we have look like torture! I think the celebs also have a lot more say in the freestyles in DWS. It seems as the celebs on SCD will just do anything that the dancers tell them to which may be their downfall as they choreographers do not always produce routines that the judges or the public like and the celebs then are blamed for a boring dance.

yeah apollo ontono i think im not sure haha, i also think the american dancers are alot more adventurous and fun with their choreography

I absolutely agree, but I think it is also inevitable.

In UK when someone learns ballroom & Latin, they learn 10 dances - bb = W,F,T,VW,QS; Latin = CCC,S,R,PD,J - and that's it. done finished!

In America they cover far more dances : As well as the 10 mentioned above which is the International Style used in all competitions, Americans learn American Smooth (4 dances); American Rhythm, all 5 International style but with different emphasis and timings; plus dances like swing, bolero, salsa, mambo etc etc etc.

They will also learn the Argentine Tango, and just about any other dance you can think of - and whatever dance they learn, there will undoubtedly be a competition for those who want one. .

This means people dancing in US are far more open minded than those in the UK, who, on the whole (at a high level) will learn excellent technique for the 10 standard dances, but be met with a blank wall if they suggest anything a bit different.

Hopefully by introducing more overseas pro dancers - & Robin Windsor, although British, has been a part of Burn the Floor - the dances generally, and especially the Freestyle will get more exciting.

It depends on the freestyle and the couple whether it is on strictly or DWTS for example Ricky & Natalie last year they did a freestyle that didn't suit and looked like a copy of the week before demo with added chacha whereas if they had done an argentine tango style of freestyle it would have suited them better whereas Chris & Ola stick to what suited them and did a fun freestyle that worked

Sometimes on DWTS and Strictly the freestyle are to concerned with how many lifts you can do.

DWTS for a while seemed to have been very hip hop heavy where it worked for Apolo Anton Ohno and Julianne it didn't work for Mel & Maks or Lacey & Lance.

There has been some truly atrocious freestyles on DWTS too and strictly has shown variety if you look at all the series. I don't think either show is better than the other in terms of freestyles.

I still shudder at the memory of Marie Osmond's "Dancing Doll" routine * shudders*

I keep hoping there will be more freestyles like Tom Chambers'...it wasn't technically the best one ever, but it suited him perfectly. I never like the "lift her over your head a million times + hip hop", that's what most of the freestyles look like to me.

There aren't a lot that stand out on DWTS to me...Donny Osmond was good, as was Drew and Cheryl's Ride a Cowboy. Most are forgettable, unless they're totally bad, like Marie's.

I doubt the UK pros who can remember muppetgate will dare to be too inventive...

...I recall a frozen turkey routine...

oh yeah, i remember colins freestyle , that was terrible i honestly dont know what she was thinking of when she choreographed that routine

I second that - that's why Tom & Camilla's and Chris and Ola's are my favourite freestyles ever - they suited the couples perfectly, and I would rate Camilla's music choice and choreography for that as up there with the most genius selections Strictly's ever seen....and I don't even really like Camilla!

I could have written this post - thank you!

We have had two couples in the final some years, with them having to do 5 dances. Little wonder that they can't come up with something brilliant.

I haven't seen DWTS. They do have a 200 million+ population and therefore higher budget, and a lot of Olympic gold medallists to call on.

The freestyle mostly has been a mixture of moves they had already done in SCD. To improve on that, the final would have to have a maximum of 3 dances - 1 freestyle, 1 ballroom and 1 latin.

I haven't seen DWTS but for me the most satisfying freestyle on SCD was a ballroom based routine (Tom and Camilla) which to me proves a point that it is not necessarily about the introduction of new dance style genres (although not necessarily opposed to that) as about using some imagination and flair. We get too many substandard Patrick Swayze/John Travolta style routines.

I agree that Tom, being a big Fred Astaire/Gene Kelly fan (like me), probably had more say in shaping his freestyle than other celebs. He had always wanted to do that type of routine and so was passionate about it.

Please no hip hop....please please please......

I have to admit i don't look forward to the freestyles but occasionly there is one i enjoy, my favourites being Chris & Ola's, Donny Osmonds and Alesha's.

I think the difference is really that DWTS is on the whole far more high-concept than the UK version. Aside from the odd aberation like Camilla's Marionette Tango, or Erin's explicitly James Bond rumba last year, our dances are far more basic and traditional in terms of concept. Whereas in America you'll have dancers popping out of sarcophagae or swinging across the dance-floor on vines or being Star Wars characters, or robots from the future, or on unicycles or whatever batshit nonsense they want to pull out of thin air this week. Thus when they come to the final they're more used to knowing what sort of things to put before an audience. Also ballroom elements are explicitly banned in DWTS, so the routines are far more outre on the whole.

For what it's worth, I thought both Maks and Erin's and Kelly & Louis's freestyles in the series I've watched recently were as bad as anything we've seen over here, and that not even to mention Marie Osmond doing the robot for 90 seconds.

I do worry with recent series that the freestyles over here are going to become more and more risk-averse and samey, as the most popular two (Chris and Tom's) were pretty much the same in tone. I'd love to see a romantic showdance or a melodramatic showdance done right, but I think we're just going to get more charging around gurning happily, because that's what sells. I am glad we're in a much better place than pre Series-5 though, when the showdances were universally dull.

What I don't understand is the argument that sticking to the 10 dances is the problem in the show dances, or maybe I'm misunderstanding people's posts and they are saying that lack of experience outside those genres which is making the dances so naff? . I certainly think it is the rubbish disco dancing type stuff which makes them disappointing.

Many UK dance schools embrace quite a few genres now. ( I was surprised, when contacted by a possible dance partner, to find he had been learning Amercian style tango (and I think cha cha etc) since I didn't expect it to be taught over here.)

And (dare I say it?) sticking to the 10 dances or being unadventurous wasn't Lisa and Brendan's problem with their showdance.

I would be interested to see some American Rhythm on SCD though, even as one of the fixed dance styles, and perhaps some mambo. But not too many variations on the jive like dances. International jive and one other is enough for me.

we need more wow show dances

I wish the showdance didn't have to be fast paced... I'd love to see a Waltz based showdance for example. It seems a shame that if a finalist is more ballroom-inclined, they don't get to show off their best skill in their very last dance. At most I think an AS would be attempted, nothing slower.

For example...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDOVq9mc2pY

Natalie and Ricky's freestyle was a joke. All he did was lift her over his head. Ricky technically is a better dancer than Chris, but he didn't even show any technical ability in that. The DWTS celebs just look they are having fun when they perform their freestyles, which is what Chris did. I think the fun and entertaining element is what helped him to win.

I think of the freestyle that Kristi Yamaguchi and Mark Ballas did. She just went with that fusion of mambo and hip hop knowing that a woman had not won in years.

Totally agree with you katie_p.

Thanks for the clip, I'd forgotten that routine; absolutely beautiful. Two of my favourite professionals.

Thing is, Erin & Colin's freestyle wasn't in the least inventive, it was just "old hat" - it was something that had already been done by so many different couples as a demonstration dance, over so many years previously, that it had long died through over exposure, and most people hoped it would remain buried never to reappear!!

I think my favourite freestyle has to be Bridie Carter & Craig Monley's from DWTS Australia. It'd never be allowed here though because SCD doesn't use props, which is a shame. I'd hate SCD to become more about the props than the actual dancing but sometimes, on rare occasions, a prop can really enhance a routine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6RB2EnyYOU

I knew someone would drag out the Bridie Craig freestyle : )

Just kidding, it really is the most inventive show dance, and beautifully done.