Ore is not dancing Paso. (Process of elimination.) He tweets in reply to someone asking when they'll see his paso that they have to 'get through another week first'. So maybe, though we've NO IDEA what he's dancing on Saturday, we may know what he's dancing the week following if he survives.

Claudia and AJ will be dancing the Jive to ‘Hey Mickey’ by Toni Basil
Danny and Oti will be dancing the Charleston to ‘Puttin’ On The Ritz’ by Gregory Porter
Ed and Katya will be dancing the Jive to 'Great Balls of Fire’ by Jerry Lee Lewis
Greg and Natalie will be dancing the Quickstep to ‘Hand Jive’ by Sha Na Na
Judge Rinder and Oksana will be dancing the Salsa to ‘Spice Up Your Life’ by Spice Girls
Louise and Kevin will be dancing the Paso Doble to ‘Explosive’ by Bond
Ore and Joanne will be dancing the Viennese Waltz to ‘That’s Life’ by Frank Sinatra

So Judge Rinder and Oksana have upset the dart throwing monkeys this week then. I don't know Hand Jive to judge. That's Life seems a little too... staccato... for a Viennese Waltz? I'm concerned Puttin' on the Ritz could be too 'straight' for a Charleston. Claudia's still being kept in the 'kid' lane whilst Ed is... quite frankly Ed. Explosive seems decent for a Paso Doble.

wonder if they have Ore's dance wrong and it should be foxtrot ?

So they have two couples doing Jive and then we have Greg dancing a Quickstep to Hand Jive ?..

Couldn't think of a better place to put this, but it has been confirmed that there'll only be one dance each in the quarter-final on December 3.

This means the live show that week will contain just five competitive dances - the lowest number ever? (It's a theme week so the group dance at the beginning means it still lasts an hour, which I think is the joint record for shortest live show)

Very disappointed, don't they have enough dances to up it to 2, a week earlier?

It looks as though they've decided to not change anything in light of Will's withdrawal and the knock-on effect of that meaning we have one less couple than we should. Which, TBH, strikes me as the fairest way to do things.

I think it's a bit silly not to take advantage of it and chuck in another five dances. The standard of the previous two semi-finals has been shoddy to say the least, perhaps due to a combination of circumstances (illness etc) but - at least in part - because of the fact that they're having to learn two full dances in a week for the first time. And no, the Cha-Cha Challenge doesn't count. If they started that process a week earlier, then we might see a higher standard in the semis for a change.

Unless, of course, some celebrities sign up with the choice of which particular dance to skip being in their contract. But I'd have thought that was as much of, if not more of, a producer/pro-led decision.

If I recall correctly, the only other weeks with only five competitive dances in them have been Samba Week in series 1 and that godawful Charleston/Rock 'n' Roll week in series 7 (and even then, that was padded out a bit with a group Viennese Waltz).

Blackpool with only 7 dancers doesn't feel right to me.

I am most looking forward to Danny, Louise, Claudia and Ore.

I am probably not remembering this correctly ( no surprises there ) but didnt they used to do 2 dances a lot earlier on, in previous series ( I mean going back about 7 years or so )

Pity not to have more but I can also see that if the celebs signed up for one set of circumstances,then it might be unfair to ask them to commit to more at this stage

Also, I wonder if the increase in media and other promotional activity might affect this..... I mentioned on another thread that, once upon a time, it was not unusual to hear of celebs training on a Sunday, but that doesnt seem to happen now.
So these days they only have 3.5 days training before they go to Elstree ( or for this week, to Blackpool ) and then begin the costume and rehearsal part of the week, by which time they really have to have their routine finalised.

I think when they trained on Sundays, they also did fewer hours during the rest of the week. There are those who are keen who seem to do more hours, yet they may all only be contracted for 12 hours training a week. This is possibly to allow for other work commitments and avoid putting people off signing up,

BIB if you have ever seen the film 'Grease' its used in that during the school dance scenes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fY5pmzmiDO8

Interesting to look at the couples and their remaining dances after this week - out of 7 couples, 5 still haven't danced their samba. Other than the AT, which is deliberately a late performed dance each year, it's clearly the dance most of the couples are hoping to swerve around. Such a shame, as most of them do have the ability to pull off good technical routines, and samba is a great dance to watch, when done well. Is it really as much a 'dance of death' as this would suggest?

I dont blame a lot of couples for dodging the samba; In the history of the show, they are only 5 maximum sambas that I've really liked and that is saying a lot; it's just not a dance that a lot of celebrities in this show are even moderately good at. IMO it is the most difficult Latin dance to teach and master ( for a celebrity).

Still I want to see my favourite Danny performs one, I think that he will be really good at it.

I think its pretty clear that they do less hours. Back in the old classic days I remember that Ramps and Alesha did a huge number of hours. In fact ITT kept a tally of the amount of hours each couple were doing. Austin Healey also did loads of hours.
Its probably been limited because they were struggling to get celebs to commit to that type of schedule.

To be fair, they might just not say they train on a Sunday because that would admit that they know on Saturday evening that they are through. It was fine to say Sunday training when results were live on the Saturday evening. I don't know. I never liked the competitiveness over who was training more hours. It's better to work efficiently than stay for hours just for the sake of it. I'm glad they don't make a thing of it any more.