I'm not a latin or ballroom dancer and don't understand what makes an AT and Argentine Tango. Could someone explain to me what needs to be included?




I can see the problems that people are talking about with her feet and her legs not being straight and being flung around too much with no control. But I really enjoyed it, especially the few seconds when she danced out of hold with two backing dancers. The performance aspect of it was really good.


Maybe I enjoyed it because I do jazz and it was a jazz like dance.

You might want to tell Len that before he bursts another blood vessel, I'm not sure how many he's got left...

I'm no expert, but a good place to start would be to look at Vincent and Flavia's demos of the AT.

They're not 'authentic', but they show the figures, style and mood very well, I think.

And Rachel and Vincent's AT for an example of a good Strictly Celeb AT.

Others may be able to offer you more detailed advice.

There's been a couple of posts mentioning it but the basic difference between an AT and a Ballroom Tango is the hold. The essence of an AT is an A shape frame (or pyramid, where the head/chest is close together and the legs further away from the torso). Dancing off-axis (axis being dead straight) gives the AT its style through a number of steps.

Another key element is that the ladies feet should glide/slide along the floor mirroring the steps of the leader (the male) and only occasionally leaving the floor to create a variety of special moves.

The ganchos - that's the kick between the legs - which is mentioned ad nauseum on SCD, is something which uniquely identifies the AT but isn't necessary and many AT dancers hardly ever perform it.

The ocho is an 8 step circular sequence which is usually danced almost on the spot in which the lady makes the figures while the male dancer stands almost still and is usually entered or exited with a salada, which is a sliding step to the side or forwards normally.

And that's just a few. There's loads of other steps which can be included in an AT. Earlier in the thread I mentioned a couple who have a series on YouTube which explains from start to finish how to dance an AT. It's worth checking them out.

The problem with the SCD AT is that Flavia and Vincent, who brought it onto the show the first time, were AT Show Dancers not pure AT so what we see is an exaggerated form which is aimed at exciting the audience (and it does) so people expect to see Len's oft repeated "sweaty gouchos hot off the pampas looking for a lady of the night" when that's mostly utter bollox

Apparantly it takes about seventy years to get the 'authentic' AT to an acceptable level, so having a go at the style that V and F produce is probably acceptable for Strictly.

Absolutely agree Rhumba, the AT showdance enables the celebrity to have a feel and a style for a routine which makes it "recognisable" but it's always going to draw fire from the purists

Well, it's danced as standard. Just sometimes there's only a bar or two of standard plus an awful lot of faffing

That cartwheel lift thingy was as far from AT as I think I've ever seen.

Laughed like a drain.

I suppose that's a sort of faffing, actual dance avoidance.

This is true . It's like any other showdance with an AT flavour . Flavia and Vincent are crticised on YouTube for their so called ATs .

The best AT seen on SCD was Kara and Artem's imo .

I like Anita, but unfortunately I don't think she is a good enough dancer yet to keep up doing an AT to that style and tempo of music. Something slower (in all aspects) like Katie's would have better served her, imo. Good effort, but the worst AT so far for me this series. The choreography was a bit miss for me too (in combination with music) so overall I think Anita was lucky to avoid the dance off, given she and Katie were imo the two weakest dancers on the night.

Craig was harsh in comments, so I wonder if that helped with her votes, though I don't want to do Anita down as I'm sure she's not just getting sympathy votes in the same way that other contestants have in the past (she's a better dancer than some of the sympathy couples).

I don't think her technique overall is better than Kellie, Georgia (or even the former Helen), but she fits the underdog category well. Not the best, not expected to beat the best, but rises above with spirit and hard work (though to be fair they all seem to have good vibes and work ethic).

She prob make it through next week and I think she should at least (talent and technique wise) last longer than Katie.

I wouldn't mind if they got rid of the AT and replaced it with something else -jazz or contemporary maybe. Either that or keep it for the semi finals.

I do jazz and my teacher would scream at me if I flexed my feet like that!

That excuse really shouldnt be true for the professional dancers.

It's been on SCD for 12 years now, so called professionals should have enough pride in their job to go and learn any dance they are not familiar with.

It's Glebs 3rd season on a SCD related programme so he has had 3 years to learn to do it. Possibly not well but at least be familiar with it.

Quite frankly those professionals who don't bother learning the dances they are employed to teach don't deserve the respect of being called professionals.

He could at least have learnt the basic walk and say 10 moves to vary and embellish the dance. Instead of which much of it was made up of movements not seen in an AT. it was as much a showdance as anything.

If it were labelled a showdance I still would have hated her feet but at least it wouldn't be pretending it's something it wasn't. Hence it really was an incredibly poor AT as there was very little authentic AT content, which is entirely Glebs fault.

Incidentally, Anton I can't teach Latin, really should have his knuckles rapped over this and Janette with her ballroom, especially living with Aljaz such a beautiful ballroom dance.

The other answer is of course to employ dancers who are familiar with all the dances on SCD or make it part of their contract to take lessons in things they don't have much experience with.

Novel idea I know actually dancing recognisably different dances.

Not quite it hasn't, they only introduced it in Mark Ramprakash's year which was 2006 and then it was restricted to the semi-finals. It's not been freely available to everyone for anywhere near as long.

I do agree with the basic premise of your post though, the professional dancers should show the right respect for the dance by at least trying to get it right.

Of course silly me you are right, but still 9 years is long enough for some lessons in styles you are not familiar with.

To me it's like being a filing clerk and only ever bothering to file properly up to s because you haven't learnt the alphabet after s. I know in real life any filing clerk who did that would very quickly be an ex filing clerk.

Maybe SCD should ditch the viewer phone in and base it entirely on the Judges vote. In this way maybe there will be less heated arguments and less toys out of the pram behaviour. Then we could have our favourite ringah winning all the time,

Ah so now it all makes sense why you were so rude in the other thread.
just where exactly have I blamed Anita?

This argument would hold true for any dance. The show is not 12 weeks of show dances, all the different dances have different characteristics and the pros should teach 12 different dances.

If all the dances were a mishmash of what ever the pros wanted to teach what would be he point?

Your comment about the judges is irrelevant because it has nothing at all to do with what is being discussed here.
Nor has anything about being anyone being a ringer.

But hey if that's what you feel is important to put down other dances because the argument does your favourite no advantage go for it, but I am not going to answer given that I can appreciate the quality of someone's dancing even though I don't really like them and also like a person whilst acknowledging their dancing is not at all good.

Oh, please. They have critiqued it every single dance.