I agree whole-heartedly.

I understand why Artem doesn't get blamed for his choreos as much as Aliona. It's like the difference between pop music and jazz music. Majority of people prefer pop music (which is why it's called pop) and think jazz is just a bunch of incoherent noise. You ask a musician, and they'd pick jazz over pop any day.

I'm saying the difference between Artem and Aliona is as vast as pop and jazz music, but it's similar. Take their ballroom tangos for example. Artem has choreographed 2 Tangos, quite low on content, but both well received, because they both used simple and concrete concepts: sexuality. Take Aliona's tangos from the same series: Last year's tango with Matt was full of content, she used dancing (instead of poses, lifts or props) to express the music. But when you mention this dance to anyone all they remember is the little shape they did at the end which Len didn't like. This year's tango: had about as much content in it as either one of Artem's tangos, but we all remember the fuss that was made (and is still being made) over how contentless it was. No one even mentioned how cleverly she had used different types of hold to demonstrate the relationship she and Harry were portraying, while dancing at the same time.

Aliona has had 2 of the best celebs in the last 2 years, therefore you would assume she would be able produce the best choreographed routines for them, as she would have had to spend less time teaching them the basics & have more time for good choreography. Matt & Harry were/are the favourites, therefore were/are expected to get to the final. That shouldn't be a difficult task when you consider the ability of most of the other competitors.

Matt & Harry's ability proves successful for them & not necessarily Aliona's choreograhpy. A good dancer/performer/teacher does not necessarily make a good choreographer.

(Sorry to repeat myself as I have mentioned this before)

But so did Natalie Lowe, Ricky W and Scott last year. At least Aliona and Matt lost to a partnership that had not only a great celeb dancer, but had the hot new guy, had a love story, striking and daring choreography as well. Natalie produced beautiful traditional routines with both of her celebs, and she lost it to a very inferior celeb dancer.

Natalie Lowe didn't really have any control over her celebrity having a highly publicised arrest for assault halfway through the series (which wasn't resolved until well after the series was finished), or immediately following a series where the public favourite had been "forced to quit" by "po faced judges" who were seen to be obsessed with technique over entertainment, something which was seen to be in need of correction.

And plenty of people blamed Ricky's loss on her at the time - both in terms of her choreography (which even I thought was pretty indifferent for a lot of the series) and her personality, which was widely reviled.

I agree!

BIB - I would also say that given that they only had 6-7 hours of training each week due the vast amount of time spent careering around the country last year, Aliona really had to cram everything in, Matt had to pick things up very quickly and I would say that was due to his other previous training.

(I recall Matt saying that most weeks he only really learnt his steps and if there was any time left they threw a bit of polish at it. Which given some of the dances they came out with (and I really enjoyed them) is pretty amazing.)


Thankfully this year Harry & Aliona are based in London, plenty more time to train, so they actually have the time to go that bit slower and break it down and make sure Harry is properly grounded in the dance.

I thought Harry's Quickstep this week was absolutely wonderful, I really loved it, and you could see how well Harry was doing and how all that slower training had paid off.

I was always amazed at how well Matt and Aliona did on such short training time.