Thank you for some reasonable perspective.

If someone like Greg managed to do that kind of basic content, people would be filled with praise.

Harsh critics on here.

I'm fairly sure I spotted Giovanni teaching Laura batucadas in a ITT clip, so I think it was a misguided attempt to distract from the dancing she couldn't do because of her injury. I think he took it just a little too far though!

Laura wasn't terrible either, just a bit tentative. Definitely not her best dance.

people on here are ridiculously harsh/mean

It wasn't her best dance by a long way but samba is difficult and rarely gets high marks. In fact if you look at the stats samba appearances on strictly are reducing in recent years compared to other dances. I'd really like to see greg for example do a samba. and would there be a thread saying he was terrible I don't think so.

Just watched it again and what she dances is not that bad actually .I think Gio distracted me first time around .

But the faces she pulls , . Sorry Laura , but the blow up doll face is just not sexy .
http://imgur.com/a/nSTSi

Last week Laura was fantastic! This week she was dreadful.

Her facial expressions when with Claudia were very revealing, but I disagree with those who think she was angry with Gio. I think it is more likely she was angry with herself as she looked close to tears a lot of the time.

It's blatant that Bruno likes Laura & Gio because he has consistently given high marks even when the dancing itself has not always been consistently good. The dance off is a distinct possibility.

I think Gio choosing to showcase himself for the couple of sections she clearly couldn't manage was a big mistake and gave this bad impression.

But perhaps she was finding the whole dance a big challenge and there just wasn't time to re-choreograph those sections?

I find it quite difficult to work up an opinion about Laura either way - positive or negative. She's been filler for me since day one. Nice girl but not a memorable dancer.

Bruno has given her a 9 every week since week 3 no matter how well she's danced. I really don't think such blatant favouritism helps her at all.

I agree she seemed to be fighting tears. I suspect she was in quite a bit of pain

I said on the NAT last night when I caught up that I'd been expecting a disaster and I really didn't think it was. It's a difficult dance and she gave it a good shot, I thought.

I thought she was improved on her week 1 Cha Cha performance wise.

I agree with that. Instead of doing 200 pirouettes across the floor at the speed of light, he could have done something different.

However, she's bad at Latin, regardless of a bad ankle. Her Salsa was very substandard and landed her in the DO. Even if she wasn't injured I doubt it very much that it was going to be a great dance anyway.

You are seriously blinkered where Laura is concerned.

I could throttle you.

They were talking about Week 3's Salsa where she ended up in the dance-off.

Should I be scared?

It was exactly what I meant.

I expect she probably was.

For example, for last week's Tango, she was only allocated a maximum of 12 hours training in total (under medical advice), and didn't train for more than one hour at a time, and iced her leg in between sessions. Normally they would train for around 36 hours.

Laura described the treatment she had on her ankle, on the Friday morning before the Tango.

Basically it's under ultrasound image guidance to get a visualisation of the exact irritable structure. The doctor then removes any fluid within the tendon sheath of the one giving me problems, to reduce the friction and ease the pain! Then plasma from the blood in my arm is injected into my ankle to speed up recovery. And hey presto! Isn't science great?
On Saturday I was still in a lot of pain but the adrenaline just takes over.

I think the injury has probably got worse this week.
Giovanni knows that they have to dance really well to have a chance of being high enough on the leader board to hopefully avoid the D O.

Laura actually has been good at performing the dances so far, and had been learning to become a better dancer in both Latin and Ballroom until the injury.

The Samba wasn't good, but she did have quite good hip action at times.
The appearance of the dance leads me to think that Giovanni had aimed for a high content dance, (because they would need to do that) but Laura's ankle had become much worse at some time later in the week and she was struggling with a lot of pain during the dance (she seemed to be struggling to keep her facial expression after the dance). I think there were probably very late on changes, where Laura couldn't dance the routine that they had been trying to bring.

Giovanni was out dancing Laura by too much a couple of times. That may have been part of the planned routine, or 'distraction dancing'. I expect Laura was supposed to do batucadas, but it was decided late on to change the choreography.

The impression I have formed of Laura is that she is a very gutsy lady and doesn't make excuses - just does the best she can.

I am sooo sorry.

Please accept my sincere apology.
I feel a right plonker.

I was very disappointed with Laura. After her outstanding performance last week I think she is going to be in the DO tonight. I had assumed she was over her injury but maybe she is not fully recovered from it? It certainly did hold her back last week.

A big problem for me was Gionvanni's choreography, it seemed to be about showcasing him rather than Laura, at times she was just left standing. Bruno really likes them, maybe it's the Italian link and always marks kindly.

Haha, no worries!

I've had fans of the people I criticised telling me to shut up, wishing me death, sending me private messages telling to stop posting "abuse" but I have to say being threatened with throttling was a first

I think Fatskia has summed it up - Laura did a fairly good job on an injured leg. It is a better dance than the judge's comments implied but not perfect. It looked to me as well like the routine was changed late in the week and the 'distraction dancing' was added. I am not a fan of the ending and don't think Gio called that one right - a different piece of 'distraction' was needed there so the camera stayed with Laura.

To say that the dance was 'rubbish' or whatever.... nope. It was a fair performance overall and deserved a mid-table position.

Maybe it doesnt take too much to please me. I like most SCD contestants and liked Laura's dance.

Lol and I wasn't afraid to publically apologise for my idiocy.

I agree, it was a good attempt at a samba. It was just that Gio definitely got it wrong and over-egged his input. His job is to make his partner look good not highlight the massive divide between their capabilities.

She didn't dance well - it was very 'jolty' for lack of a better word. In the sections where she and Gio are doing the same, it really showed how poorly she was executing the moves. Don't get me wrong, she was a million miles better than I would be but she was the poorest of the celebs.

For everyone who is being critical of Laura's performance then think what it must be like to dance on a sore ankle let alone do a dance like the samba. If the production team had been thinking of Laura instead of the show they would have given her different dance. For those criticising GiovanniI he will know more than anyone how painful that dance will have been for Laura. The pros know the celebs better than anyone. Laura normally beams when she is dancing. She did not smile at all last night. Giovanni is getting a lot of criticism but I think he will have been thinking of Laura when he choreographed that routine.