I know nothing about ballroom but want to know if an American VW is different. The following is from DWTS programme, don't get me wrong I absolutely love it but as it's mostly danced out of hold is it a VW?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuPmthGxcEE

btw, his mambo in Week 2 was amazing too.

It has a flavour of VW would never get away with it here because here the true dance is required, but in the USA show it seems to be more relaxed.

When he did do the VW he was quite good, but as you say far too much out of hold and the spins and things not VW at all

Can anyone remember on "so you think you can dance" when two idiots couldn't work out what the Vietnamese Waltz was about?

It wasn't a VW for me - but it was beautiful.

There are two standards in dancing - American and International. On SCD they dance to the international style and on DWTS to the American style.

In international there are very few steps and Helio's VW would not be acceptable. In the US when they dance a Foxtrot, it's what we would call American Smooth.

There have been problems with Len judging on DWTS as if the dances were international and marking them down for spending too long out of hold, which is okay in the American standard.

Yes, the American Style is more open hold, I think.

There was a thing on last week's programme about how one of the pros had assumed the VW was American style (not unreasonable, given that it was in America ), whereas Len was critiqueing the performance based on International Style criteria.

Len could just have got it wrong of course...