Originally Posted by natalian:
“Because you keep asking 'why' did they do or not do this or that which you obviously seem to think implies that the powers that be have acted in an underhand way to deliberately engineer a particular result.
I don't believe it works like that at all. All the evidence points to the order of the dances being decided right at the start. We know, for example, that the pro dancers have choreographed the routines for each of the dances long before the week in which they are danced in the competition. We know that because there have been several occasions where pro dancers have been injured and another pro has stood in and taught the routine that has been choregraphed by the celebrity's usual pro (this year it happened with Gorka standing in for Brendan and a few years ago it happened with Ian standing in for James Jordan). We also know this because it is talked about quite openly - eg on It Takes Two you hear people say things like "I always wanted to get to week x because I knew I had y dance that week and that is the one I have always wanted to do"
Judge Rinder happened to have a dance this week that wasn't his best. Lots of celebs have had dances at this stage of the competition that weren't their best - Pixie Lott for example. That is just the luck of the draw. Rinder was clearly the worst of the last five, from a dance perspective, so I don't think it would have mattered what dance he did, it would have been very likely that he would have been bottom of the leaderboard.”
Of course they are. You can't throw a show like SCD together in a week. It will be planned months in advance. They will arrange the allocation of dances to achieve variety in each show. I don't know why they think that matters but the producers seem to think that is what the audience want and who am I to dispute it.
Flavia once intimated that who gets which dance, which week is done by drawing from a hat. We have also heard pros talk on ITT about planning ahead and teaching bits of technique in say week 3 which they know will be valuable in say week 6. In these interviews it seemed more like they were planning ahead to a known road map rather than just a vague knowledge that a dance would come up eventually. Also Katie Dereham in an interview after last year's series suggested that Anton told her at the start that they would "swerve the samba" (A decision for which I think we are all grateful

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