I think they picked the music because of the title of the song - not because it was ideal for a Samba. So that made things more difficult for AJ.

AJ's job is to make his celeb look good. I'm left with the impression that Claudia could move her hips well and could have been taught to do a very impressive Samba.

We often hear 'more hips -shorter steps' on SCD when a pro is teaching Latin. This needed to be a much more compact dance and I was glad to hear Len pointing that out.

Claudia looked uncomfortable quite often in that and was practically sprinting at times to cover the ground to where she needed to get to.

AJ has a very difficult task for his first Series to adapt things to Claudia's size, and he's generally been doing a reasonable job - but not for this dance.

As I said earlier, he probably had no choice in the song selection, but he would have had a choice of the tempo.

He set it at 120 bpm

Candi Staton sang it at 110 bpm.

In 2010, they slowed the same song and dance down to 100 bpm so that Matt Baker could cope with it. It was obviously too difficult for him at the original tempo.

What chance did a 4' 8" teenager like Claudia with no previous dance experience have dancing a samba for the first time at 120 bpm?

If AJ set it 20% faster than Aliona chose for Matt Baker, then that was a bad mistake. He needs to tailor everything to adapt it to suit Claudia.

Dance teachers take exams and are taught how to teach. A record of exams passed is a matter of public record and AJ has taken none.
He may come from a dancing family but the fact remains that he has, as I said zero experience of teaching and choreography other than picking up from his coaches over the years,
Those who are familiar with his dancing on the circuit are seeing the same choreography now that he has danced with Chloe.
A charming young man and a lovely dancer but simply too young to be a pro on Strictly unfortunately.
An older more experienced pro would have realised that the music was simply too fast.

We have no idea if he was the one who set the tempo though. They must be given their version of the song they practice to at the beginning of the week, and unless you have some inside info I don't know how you can be sure he decided on it, as opposed to this is what they were given and he just didn't have the experience to speak up a bit more.

So according to you, in the pre-production meeting A.J. was likely told.

"Look, we've chosen the dance and the song and we want you to dance it at an unbelievably silly pace despite the fact that even Aliona had to slow it down so Matt Baker could cope with it.
We're gonna ignore the fact that a 4' 8" teenager with no previous dance experience won't be able to handle it, but who cares?"

No I don't think so either.

I don't think anyone on the production team will set the pace of any tune other than requesting it to be either "slow" or "up tempo."

I'm sure they're dictatorial over many things but setting the exact bpms of any tune?

That's fantasy thinking.

It's worth remembering that Aljaz is 4 years older than AJ - and is now on his fourth year of Strictly so would have been the same age as AJ when he joined. Was Aljaz criticised for being too young? I can't remember?

They are safe anyway.. so hopefully they will be dancing quickstep or AS next week and I am 100% sure they will top the leaderboard.

You mean like those more experienced pros who have made bad music or choreography choices as already mentioned!

I don't remember any criticism of Aljaz either. I think A J is getting it in the neck for looking young.

Are they, results haven't Beeb shown yet

I can't believe how patronising some ppl are about AJ's age and supposed inexperience...he wouldn't have been selected as a pro if he was unproven. I like his work ethic in that he is pushing a gymnast, whose tenacity and stamina go without saying

He made a mistake with the tempo and overestimated what his (very able) celeb could do.

It would not be the first time a pro has set the bar too high for a celeb. E.g. Katya admitted she put it a very difficult lift and that backfired.

Since his other choreography has been ok, I don't think anyone can make any inferences about his young age affecting his teaching cability.

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But production does dictate which song they get and they were dancing to pretty much the version of the song from Romeo and Juliet which is that speed and it just didn't work because it was too fast, so I don't think you can blame him entirely for it though because it's never as simple as the pros making all the decisions.
I'm sure he'll learn from it though and hopefully Claudia can get another breakthrough dance as I think she's got a lot of potential.

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It's got nothing to do with how long a post is.

It's 25 posts a page- even if you post 'War and Peace' in its entirety.

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Yup, and TPTB are playing up the fact that he's young every week which isn't doing him any favours with getting him to be taken seriously by some people, sadly.

I agree, that dance was too fast for Claudia, it could have been really good slowed down a wee bit.