I do like Rachel. She seems a lovely, nice and easy going girl and Vincent & her have a great partnership.

My favourite Rachel & Vincent dances have been the Salsa and QS.

I do understand where the judges are coming from in their criticism of Rachel. She is technically great but i think she is still missing that extra spark which makes a great dance. Their jive was a good routine but it lacked many of the basic jive moves, hence why we didn't see a light & bouncy Rachel. She unfortunately just didn't sparkle last Saturday. I think it is unfair that the judges have high expectations from her but it's the same for Cherie, Tom & Austin and the latter two are meeting their expectations whereas Rachel has fallen behind.

Her AS looks good and i am looking forward to her performance.


SCD-O - I completely agree with you that all the couples are competitive, they want to reach the final and win. I rather see the pros/celebs be honest in whether they want a 10 and want to impress the judges instead of hearing cliched expressions of the taking part that counts because that doesn't wash over with me.

Oh yeah, Jodie is disarming. Everything seemed to be working against her when the show started. She's too tall, she messed up her first dance. She failed to ignite the judges fire with her rhumba (whom, I was told, tall people can do especially well because of all the lines). But she's steadily improving. She clearly didn't wish to win the competition the start (earlier ITT clips showed she wanted Cherie to win and she meant it!). Then she wowed us with her AS and charmed us with her waltz. Still somewhat 'rough' in places, but very pleasant to watch nevertheless. The j-thing, isn't it?

Brian's 'get your butt out there' Fortuna is a clear example of what the 'dancing world' is like. Even if the trophy is a pair of thongs, if's it's a dance competition, the pro dancers would want to win it. I wouldn't go off Brian just because he wanted to win the competition.

Brendan is an unknown entity. Too volatile. Maybe he's trying to reform (his girlfriend might have help him there), but there's no doubt he's desperate to get into the finals and win it with Lisa.

I believe Kristina would push her partner very hard if she knows he has the potential to win the competition.

They are all competitive, every last one of 'em. The focus is generally on the sports people section as being seen as competitive, but the entertainment industry is just as cut-throat, if not more so!, and they are all used to fighting for their space.

Some of them can mask it easier with a smile and a shrug - but I'd not want to play Snakes and Ladders with any of them - and I bet Snap is a bloodsport.

From where I came from, as a boy I loved the card game Happy Family. I am sure they are all playing that game (but secretly eying for the family fortune)!

I deliberately didn't use the J word but yes I luv a good story.

Not going off Brain - quite the contrary. The pro dancers allowed to be competitive. Illogical I know. Love his Tango hold!

I think Brendan is less the bad boy than he's been shown to be. He'd love to be the only pro to win twice. I did think at one stage that there was a script for a rivalry between Brendan and Matthew to parallel the Austin v Tom one but the judges have recently been harsh to Christine.

Kristina has done pretty well with what she's got.

I think that's the same mistake Vincent is making.

Yes, Rachel can do the complex choreography, but it requires effort and concentration that takes away from the performance; and time spent on learning the choreography is time that isn't there for sharpening up the details.

I watched Rachel's and Louisa's jives again earlier, and there was a complicated sequence of moves in Rachel's that didn't have any equivalent in Louisa's. (Perhaps because Louisa and Vincent had only two days to train.) There were some awkward moments, yet it is still got 8, 9, 9, 10.

I think the lesson from that, and from a number of other things, is clear: "performance" and projecting personality count for a lot more with the judges than complex choreography.


I don't think they forget about concentrating on selling the perfromance; imo it's just that the complex choreography leaves less time for it.

I don't agree that she always seems to be looking as if she's thinking about the next step; and you don't seem to really think that either, given what you say about waltz or VW.

In the jive, she started well, as a performance, but, as Craig said, there were some sticky transitions where it looked a little bit lumpy and lost its impetus.

You're right, I didn't mean forget as much as run out of time for getting the performance element right.

As to her VW (I looked it up and it was the viennese), I think the reason that was so beautifully performed is because the dance only allows certain choreography steps, there was no opportunity for Vincent to make it unnecessarily difficult, so they had to concentrate on the performance.

That's where I'm getting annoyed with Vincent more than Rachel I think, I love him, but it's not all about flashy, difficult choreography. He's not listening, he's not realising that lots of people aren't connecting with her regardless of how technically good she is and that the one time when I did connect with their dancing is when the choreography was simple but the "performance" was great.

I also think that Brian and Vincent especially amongst the male pros can make their female celebrities look worse. They are amongst my favourite pros but they have to remember it's not about making themselves look brilliant, it's about making their celeb look as good as possible and their snake-hipped, bunny on acid routines just make their partners look even more lumpy. Matthew and Ian are probably less accomplished, more reserved dancers but the differential between them and their celeb partners is less marked and less grating. It's the same problem that Ola has as a female pro, I think. Sometimes, quiet, simple and breathtaking can be way more effective, just look at Jodie and Ian's waltz.

Just looked at the judges' backstage comments on Rachel and Vincent's jive on the BBC website and this time Arlene laid into her!

There seems to be a significant segment of the audience -- not only for SCD but for a wide range of shows -- who struggle to see any "personality" that isn't unmissably "loud".


Something like that, yes:

Yes, and I think Lousia's jive was similar, in a way. They had only two days of practice (because Vincent had an injury) and so couldn't do anything too complicated. (Vincent waas criticised for making the choreography too complex for at least one of his other dances with Louisa.)


I love that description, btw.

ITT has struggled to justify Len's views this week and has, imo, failed miserably.


But none of the judges complained of too little jive sequence on the night. That's come up only in ITT's attempts to explain Len's comments.

And only Arlene seemed to be complaining that it wasn't bouncy enough. (Arlene wants Rachel to "push into the floor a little bit more to get the bounce".)


Bruno seemed to think there was plenty of sparkle, though his metaphor of choice was "firecracker".

Arlene even said she thought it "was a sparkly finish, as sparkly as you are" before going into her rhyming point about pushing into the floor a little bit more.

Criag had some constructive criticism (which I thought was spot on) but added that "apart from that I thought it was really great".

It's only Len's comments that are the problem.


Len's early remarks on this year's celebs suggest that he did not have such high expectations. For example, he said that she was the favourite with "everyone who knows nothing about dancing", while he, on the other had, had a "funny 'maybe not' feeling".

The same sort of feeling he still seems to have.