Good response!

Aliona is young(ish) and still learning herself. Should she be better than she is, at 27 ?

Artem and Pasha are roughly the same age. Looking at them, without knowing their exact ages, Natalie, Ola and Flavia don't look much older either.

A brief pause in the waltz choreography was a marmite moment, and Halloween week was, it seems, all about entertainment value as opposed to technical prowess.

Viewers are fickle as to whether or not the show is about dance and choreography, or whose pecs are better at any given week. Aliona is doing a great job with Harry, not just dancing around him like other pros with their celebs, and I trust her ability to let him grow.

It's so easy to hate Aliona/her choreography - she's young, attractive and thinks outside of the norm. Torches and pitchforks, everyone!

Yes, that is exactly it. We're jealous! Same old line always trotted out.

Now, Flavia I am actually jealous of!

Bingo, I had being called a jellus hatah on Strictly Bingo.

Still waiting for the blinking dead nan though. Bloomin' amateur celebs, get Scott in to show 'em how to do Strictly Bingo properly!

I must admit we haven't had a jellus hatah accusation for a while

I know frankly bugger all about technique and choreography other than what I've picked up on SCD

all I know is, when harry gets into hold and dances proper tango or waltz steps I absolutely love it because he's very very good and the moment faffing about happens, I'm disappointed.

Yay! Someone mentioned jellus hatahs.

I might be able to slightly help here.

Aliona is the youngest of the current Strictly pros (according to the BBC Strictly website where one of their quizzes asks that very question - I thought it was Katya so I got that wrong).

Pasha is 31, and Ola is 29 I think.
Flavia's 30 (pretty sure there's a 2-3 year age difference between her and Vincent), fairly certain Natalie is in her 30s as well and I think Artem will be 29 now.

I've had a look at Aliona's website where it has her achievements as a professional - she may not have won any competitions but she did usually come in the top 10 for Latin. All but one of her competitions were Latin (the other was a 10 Dance) so I presume she is a specialist there. Maybe she's not as confident with ballroom choreography? (If this were the case though then she should have asked for help when she first started SCD, if not last year).

Walks just like me!


Thanks for the info hun!

Aliona is like marmite

You either love her or you hate her

I love her!!

Personally I think she is a breath of fresh air to Strictly, I love her choreography and she is the loveliest person I have met in a long time - shy, but perfectly lovely

Me too, that figure, sighs, she has the perfect figure I never got

I think most of the pros are Latin specialists, barring Erin, Anton & Natalie who are ballroom, and Vincent & Flavia who are/were 10 dancers. So being less confident with ballroom choreography would be relatively common amongst the pros.

I think her choreography has improved from last year; so she will get more experience again this year but may not be able to create the perfect mix of crowd and judge pleasing dances until maybe another year or two. If you bear her age in mind, the way she does things makes more sense.

I don't agree that because Holly gyrated and posed for pop video clips should be considered to have dancing experience. Harry did the paso, but also as a drummer he's got an advantage because drumming requires great body co-ordination.


To be honest Sid, I'd rather watch a lot of faffing about on a Saturday night, over badly executed full of content routines. Ideally, I would have liked to watch good quality full of content routines, but could only happen if the contestants were allowed to take ballroom lessons prior to the show. In the timeframe they are given, i don't believe they can produce a routine that is enjoyable to watch AND full of content. Well, at least that's the case with most of the contestants.


Ok, I'll try a bit of backing up for you. The main been about her choreography is the lack of content. For example, her tango with Harry had 18% tango, and 82% faffing. That is 17 secs of tango in a 94 sec routine. That's just not enough tango for a tango routine, especially when the faffing is not particularly clever or spectacular. I can't "prove" that last bit to you, because it's personal taste.

Regarding the routines being more about her than about her partner. Various reasons for that. Firstly, her choreography is more about materialising and showcasing her ideas and inspirations and less about what suits her partner. An example of that is her American Smooth with the contemporary twist she did with Matt. Lots of what one might consider "innovative" ideas, but the whole style and feel of the dance just didn't suite Matt, and she should have picked up on that and adjust her choreography rather than impose it on him.

Secondly, she is using SCD to challenge herself, and that's a bit selfish, and not particularly fair to her partner. An example of that is her showdance with Matt. She tried to do a commercial/street dance routine, and she is just not good enough in these genres. Her dancing was awful, as so was the choreography.

Finally, the decorations she add in her dances are usually about her, and dancing around her partner, although to be fair other pros do that as well, but combined with the above, it's just more prominent from Aliona.

About her being a bad teacher, well, I am not qualified to judge anybody's teaching techniques, but logic detects that if you reduce the training time spent on perfecting the faffing and the theatrical elements of the routine and increase the time spent on practicing technical elements, the your student's dancing should improve. Since we don't have knowledge of the training, it is not possible to form an opinion.

Fabulous post hun, thanks for the breakdown of the tango. I think if Harry's wrapping his legs around the chair had counted as "in hold" they'd have definitely made the time limit for amount in hold.

You people are all so greedy. She's got legs and twirls in a short skirt every other week, what more do you want?

I know! Imagine wanting actual tango steps in a tango! We're just poor deluded hatahs though!

My pleasure.


Quite! And if Aliona having him by the balls counts as "in hold", then they haven't been off hold since day 1!

I think one of the things that I get annoyed by...is the 'whatever' eye rolling expression she does when the judges say they want more content...

Anyway Karen Hardy said on ITT tonight that there was only 17 seconds of Tango in that Tango.

My attitude always stiffens when I see that

Excellent post. Sums up how I feel too


17 seconds of actual tango? That is absolutely ridiculous. IMO she is going too far now but she just doesn't seem to care which is starting to come across as arrogance. And the roll eyeing doesn't help, it's actually very disrespectful.

The eye-rolling just compounds the fact that Aliona doesn't care what the judges' think. She looks terribly smug with it at times. Aliona should stick to the rules and do the dance she is supposed to do.

If the other pros took the same attitude as Brendan with his illegal lifts and Aliona who is even worse, the show would be in chaos. The pros job is to teach celebs the dance they are given.

I'm very glad that there is a lot of support for Aliona - I think she is an exciting choreographer and I enjoyed her tango routine with Harry. I also agree that his only serious competitor is Chelsee because, apart from her ability to learn quickly and put on a good show, she has won so many hearts which is very very important if you want to win.

I suspect Aliona may still be carrying around the "stigma" of having somehow spoilt Rav Wilding's chances in her first year because, IIRC, they went out pretty early and in fact he did sometimes look awkward with what she was making him do.. she got the blame for that - there again he was perhaps not the right kind of raw material.

I think she's doing a pretty good job of pleasing most of the people most of the time. After all she did get a 10 from one judge and I suspect that she is high up the leaderboard with the televoters. The BBC must love her considering the partners she's had in the three seasons so far.