to be fair the dresses DID look like fondant fancies (thanks for the proper name starpuss!)

Exactly, dresses went from £250 to £2,500 in not much more than a year!

I didn't even realise I'd typed something different to you. I wasn't correcting you. Mr Kipling does call them French Fancies and lovely they are too. I called them fondant fancies as that's the generic name for them burned into my mind after trying to make some from a Mary Berry recipe. It was not a success.

They wore beautiful dresses! I feel nostalgic

Honestly, for me choreo and music play a huge part, more so than anything else, all things being equal. In reality things are rarely equal.

I used to be more about technicality, but not so much nowadays. For example Pixie is probably the best technical dancer there, but I find her clinical, soulless, automonish. This is not a personal dig, I just mean her dancing. But her dancing bores me. Give me someone slightly less technically perfect, but has some soul whilst dancing anyday.

But ultimately character/entertainment and technicality play equally important parts for me. Too much either way, and it doesn't work for me. Someone who dances respectably, but not fantastically, but gives a great performance with some soul, is fine - as long as it's not too gimmicky. I'd much rather watch that than soulless precision.

But for me creative, innovative, daring choreo winds hands down.