After seeing Natalie & Ian dance so divinely on the tour, I will definitely miss watching them together this year, but I can see Brendan & Natalie being a fabulous couple - in fact, one of the best and up there with Ola & James and Vincent & Flavia.

Isn't Brendan shorter than Natalie? Certainly once she's got heels on!

Natalie is too tall for Brendan.

Yeah, they're either exactly the same height or she's slightly taller. I can't warm to that pairing, Natalie is perfect with Ian

Well at least Ola's in that dance, so that's infinitely better than Gary & Karen! I'm now going to have to go and watch a pro dance that has the Jordans and Flavia in it

I'm sorry I'm not implying the BBC are turfing out older more talented female dancers for younger less talented women, I'm explicitly stating it, they are not as worthy of a place on the show as the likes of Karen, Nicole or Camilla. I wouldn't mind if they brought in better dancers but they haven't yet.

She may not be the costume designer but I'm sure she has a say in what she wears.

That's your opinion (and you are entitled to it) but personally I much prefer Natalie to Camilla and although I liked Nicole I equally like Aliona - 1 is not necessarily better but they are just different IMO.

You're stating your OPINION, not a fact, so don't act like it is please. You may think they're less talented, but not everyone does, and you're not automatically right.

My own opinion is that Flavia, Ola and Natalie at least are infinitely preferable to Karen and Camilla, and I also like Aliona. I don't claim that viewpoint to be fact because it's not, and I'm just as entitled to think that as you are to think Karen and Camilla are better.

I'm sure the girls do get some say in what they wear, but the costume designers are employed for a reason, and seeing some of the awful creations they have come up with, it's clear to me that the pros don't have the last word.

Karen and Nicole were world champions. That is not opinion.

So was Flavia. Natalie was an Australian champion and Ola Polish champion. They're all highly qualified dancers, but titles aren't everything and certainly aren't the prerequisite standard for competing on Strictly - it's also about teaching skill, choreography, charisma and much more besides. And yet again all of those are highly subjective as to what an individual personally values or feels makes a good teacher/choreographer/personality etc.

I think its only fair to give her a second chance with a more talented celebrity. I dont think it particularly fair to judge any pro when they dont get someone on both ends of the spectrum.

I'm waiting to see how she gets on with Matt as i didn't warm to her when she was with Rav. I also didn't like her response to Len when he commented about the lift.

I do however enjoy watching her dance, and it will be nice to see what she comes up with for the Cha cha.

I'm very fond of Flavia, and I do love watching her AT, but she is not a world champion- certainly not in the sense that Nicole and Karen are. V&F won the showdance section- not a title, just a section of an overall competition- of a competition which is not particularly well known or regarded in the AT world. If you start on that vein, a lot of them could be classed as world champions- for example Darren and Lilia won the rising star Professional Latin at Blackpool. It doesn't make them world champions in a meaningful sense, whether or not they're technically have a world title, because the very top champions are excluded from competing there.

I agree with you that professional status doesn't equate to being a top pro on Strictly... Although arguably you could say in fact that of the seven winners, two have been world champions, and four (five? Can't remember about Ola) have been world semi finalists or even finalists in two cases.

I don't like Karen or Camilla either, but I did think it was nice that for the first four or five series, our pros were among the top British competitors in recent times (in Latin, not ballroom). The BBC willingness to dump champions in favour of snowboarders is a sad reflection of the direction they want to take the show in as far as I'm concerned. And yes, I do know they're only concerned with ratings!

None of this means I don't like Aliona though, in reference to the original equation... And I'm sorry for PasoHardly, as I know it's his/her pet hate for everything to be turned into a discussion of the departed pros

I didn't mean to imply that Flavia was a world champion in the same sense as Karen and Nicole, I know she's not. But she does still have a world title which looks impressive to the ordinary person reading her CV, and which only a small minority would consider meaningless in comparison to Karen or Nicole's, because very few people will know the difference, that's just a fact. It's not as prestigious as being overall world champion, but seeing as so many of the pros competed at the same time as each other, there is no way they could all be world champions anyway. (as a side note, Ola was a world semi-finalist I believe.).

Of course it's nice that the BBC did hire world champions for Strictly, but they were never going to get a cast who had all been world champions, and nor should they. It's the diversity of experience and style that makes Strictly so interesting (and I mean in ballroom and Latin, I don't support going wider than that, hence my original objections to some of the new guys!) and I don't see a problem with hiring people who aren't world champions or have had wildly successful careers as competitiors, because not everyone wants to compete for a long time (take James & Ola, for example, they had a very short professional competing career because they chose to teach full-time instead) and at the end of the day each competition can have only one winner! What matters more in my opinion are the other factors I mentioned previously, because at the end of the day they're all good dancers relative to 95%+ of the population, regardless of whether an individual viewer likes a particular dancer's style.

Aneta in the dance troupe has also been a Junior World Champion with Derek Hough, but on the 3 occasions they later competed against Lilia and Darren, they finished a few places behind them.

I found that it was very difficult for someone with my lack of knowledge to get a real picture of how good dancers were from their competition results, as the results vary so much and the standard of the competition is often difficult to assess.

Apologies to the OP for contributing OT.

I'm no expert (just an arm chair judge ), but one of my 'tests' for a pro is whether or not they can keep up with the other dancers in the pro dances. So far the only pros that I thought couldn't do that are Hayley (and it stuck out like a sore thumb) and Jared (and I hope that will change). All the others seemed fine to me, including Aliona.

It is nice to have world class dancers, but at the end of the day when the pros are dancing on SCD, they're not being asked to dance at world class standards.

technically it's not a title- they won part of a competition, but didn't win the title. It's the BBC who claim they are world champions though, not V&F.

V&F won the UK Open Ten Dance competition in 2004 as professionals... From what I understand that is fairly impressive? And they've certainly been ranked highly in world 10 dance competitions- 5th place in 2003. Maybe the BBC should start flagging that up a bit more?

Interestingly, 4th place in the same UK Open competition was Crystal Main!

Which one's Aliona?

"Worthy"? What an exciting choice of words.

I liked watching Karen, and Nicole (although not Camilla, she's rubbish).

Hopefully I'll also like watching Aliona. Once I figure out who she is.

Life moves on.


Perhaps you could share with us your justification for making such a sweeping assertion?

V&F are good AT show dancers, they're inspiring teachers, and they're thorough professionals (well, with the exception of their behaviour during the Breakup Period).

But in AT terms, they're about average. Geraldine Rojas is demo-ing and teaching in London tomorrow, and that's what I'd call an AT champion.

V&F? Not so much.

(And guess who fixed their Wikipedia entries... )

And "Winning a world championship with a fellow professional" does not automatically correlate to "Being a good contestant in SCD".


Aliona? She's the red-head, yes?

I'm not a dancer, so I don't really get the difference between what makes a title and what doesn't. That's not the point I'm trying to make anyway, the point is that what the title is is almost irrelevant, because the general public don't care who has won what or what a particular title means relative to a different title/competition/part of a competition won by someone else. The public want to see people who they enjoy watching dancing, irrelevant of whether they're world ranked number 1 or number 20. And that's why it's pointless saying Strictly should hire world champions just because they're world champions, it's about so much more than that, which is why the series has such a diverse cast.

I agree with you Mystic.

I am a dancer, and frankly I'm not that bothered either.


I agree with this point

When Vincent and Flavia danced the AT in Dublin last May they were champions .They were my champions and the whole O2 arena stood and whooped and clapped .That for me is a champion , I couldnt care less about world titles .

I'm trying not to give the impression I know that much about it either, because I don't! And I do agree with you that it's not going to be important to the GBP... In fact the GBP would probably agree with the BBC 'sexing' up priorities. I just think it can go far in that direction- when it's not even about the person being a watchable dancer, let alone a successful professional, and instead relies solely on what that person looks like with their top off.