Apparently he's merely teaching her the routines not the joy of dahhhnce dahhhling...so much bullshine is written on here it's hilarious!

People had no problem with Anita untill the last week or so . Now she being hopped on for some reason . Jay had a bad week and all we heard was Ah bless him

Jay could threaten to kick a toddler in a bag and it would still be 'ah bless him'

Yes, if the teacher had not employed the many current aids that are available to help pupils with dyslexia. It actually part of a teachers job to change lesson planning to assist pupils with this and other needs. If they ploughed ahead with a lesson not taking someone's dyslexia into account they would be reprimanded.

It may be Gleb is employing all the methods he can to correct Anita's feet. It's not something that will change over a few weeks. I think Anita is hard working and dedicated enough to want to try what she can to improve.

There must be a lot of terrible teachers out there then.

I had a teacher once who smacked a kid with special needs because he got a bit out of control, it was horrible to see. As far as I know there were no repercussions for her although thankfully the child was moved to a different class soon afterwards.

That is dreadful

Thankfully I have never worked in a school like that however the school I attended was awful. This was the 70s. Things are changing for the better.

It's daily routine to engineer your lesson plan to take into account the needs of all the children in the class. Gleb has one pupil though so I'd be very disappointed if he wasn't doing all in his power to help her. Ofsted would have a field day

That may have been all you heard from Jay fans, but he got plenty of criticism from fans of others for his mistakes and has been criticised for his acting skills throughout the series. Now Anita is finally getting a bit of criticism and all we are hearing from her fans is 'technique doesn't matter to the viewers, she can sell a dance and she's never danced before etc.' What you hear just depends on who your favourite is.

I bet that you would have done the same.


It'd odd the second Peter leaves, criticism of Anita and Katie suddenly increased in volume.

Mere coincidence though.

Its not a coincidence, I think most people who watch the show for a love of dancing considered Peter to be the worst contestant left when he went. Now he's gone, it has highlighted that Anita and Katie are technically very weak compared to the other three (four including Helen). Nothing more or less to it than that.

I think maybe both Gleb and Anita are at fault for her feet. He as her teacher and mentor and her as they're her feet and she controls them

I'm sure one of the pro's or former pro's (might have been Karen Hardy) showed Zoe a thing about pigeon toes a couple of weeks back on ITT.

I just google searched pigeon toed and pictures of Mark Wright's pigeon chest came up!!!

Discussing this with a friend tonight who only watches on catch up & is not particularly invested in who wins. She really noticed how bad Anita's feet were for the first time this week. So perhaps up to now, the dances have managed to disguise the problem enough for most people.

I have been grumbling about her feet for weeks.

I mentioned this to someone a couple of weeks ago (after Blackpool I think) that maybe this is what all the Gleb-ography has all been about - taking a bit of pressure off Anita for a moment by drawing the attention to Gleb so people don't notice any short comings she might have - such as her feet/footwork.

That or Gleb really likes to have his moment in the sun each dance

I blame Gleb because I don't think he knows how to correct something like Anita's feet. He doesn't have the relevant dancing background. I'm not sure he's able to sort out basic problems and is probably lucky to have such an able student as Anita. The feet were an obvious problem this week, but IIRC the judges have commented on them most weeks. I also think his choreography is so difficult for someone with no dance experience (sorry, but it is relevant here), that remembering the basics probably slips Anita's mind because of the effort required to get all the fancy stuff right. He's teaching her to run before she can walk and she's so driven she does a half decent job.

I think one reason he is being blamed is that he gives us all these 'Gleb Specials', which are all well and good but not if he could instead be concentrating on Anita's footwork. But they have done well to get this far and we'll soon see if the "new hunk" novelty will get him to the final as it did for Artem, Pasha and Aljaz in their first years.

I just wanted to add that Gleb was a pro in three other countries' versions of Strictly. In the first one he was eliminated in the first week, in the second it was was week 2. Both of his partners were non dancers. In the third one which was in Russia earlier this year, he was runner up with Adelina Sotnikova, a young Olympic gold medal winner figure skater. Adelina was actually involved in choreographing of their routines because of her own experience of choreographing her skating routines.

This strikes me as relevant.

But he's about to take a non-dancer to at least 5th place, so it's surely not that relevant? Besides, anyone can be an early boot twice, even with good "on paper" prospects. It happened to Matthew Cutler, for one.

But is it him "taking" Anita to fifth place? I think it is her popularity which has got her there.

Where has her popularity come from? Partly from her upbeat, open personality, but perhaps also from the showy/campy dances she's done with Gleb. Might she have left much earlier if she'd been paired with Tristan and had done lackluster dances dressed in a purple tea cosy?

Well, we don't have a 24x7 cam in their training room so we don't know whether he's tried to correct her or not. Evidence says no, but at the end of the day nobody knows.

The other thing is, there's only so much a teacher can correct if it's an anatomical problem. Ask a physiotherapist or an orthopaedic doctor if you can correct bandy legs, pigeon toes, flat feet, etc in 12 or so weeks. When I was a child I was severely flat footed so I had to wear special orthopaedic boots...for three years. Something tells me that they don't have that much time in their hands.

As I said earlier, I felt sorry for Ricky Whittle and Steve last year because without major orthopaedic surgery they were done for (although Natalie did get some improvement with Ricky it was never going to be enough for one of the judges) but Aliona managed to get visible improvement - even if falling short of total correction - with Harry ... and I think that's the issue with Anita. There doesn't appear to be any discernable improvement.

In the US version he and Lisa Vanderpump were eliminated in week 5 I think, not 2.

He has a Masters Degree in choreography, strikes me as relevant.

That may also suggest that Harry's problem wasn't that big. Some problems can be corrected with regular physio exercises, others might need longer treatment.

Ricky's was fairly major and Natalie still manged to get some improvement. Just a skerrick, but it it was still apparent

Gleb's own footwork in ballroom is appalling, he can't teach what he doesn't know or apply himself.

Finally figured out what's been annoying be about Anita. To start with, she's just simply not as good as the others. Maybe Katie is on the same level, and she's better than Kellie and Katie is Latin, but Jay and Georgia are better. But what annoys me is that her dance shoes look too big for her. I thought this on Saturday and then I just watched her samba back. It's actually very good but she is so pidgeon toed. Her shoes look too big for her body. It's really weird and I wonder are they too big for her or is she just that tiny?

Now to Gleb. I really really don't like him. His choreography is as if he's still on DWTS. The pros on that show are even more popular than the celebrity, so pros can showcase themselves a bit more. This is not the case on Strictly and I don't think Gleb knows that. In at least three dances now he's started off with him doing something or him ripping off his clothes etc. He needs to concentrate on hiding Anita's weaknesses instead of concentrating on how show stopping the routine will be. He exposed all her weaknesses last week, many of which could've been hidden.