Strictly: Week Six

The problem with the latest round of Strictly was, through nobody’s fault, that the best performance happened first! And after Kara and Artem’s frisky Salsa, everything else seemed like a bit of an anti-climax.

That’s not to say that it was perfect. I’m wearing my Craig Revel-Horwood hat here, in that I’m starting to become picky! After all, what constitutes an all-time iconic Strictly dance? It has to have the right feel and look, the correct steps danced in a precise manner, and that little bit of indefinable magic about it as well. There’s no doubt that the Kara and Artem Salsa was pretty much bang on the money in terms of ‘wow’ and ‘performance’, but there was one tiny area in which I felt it failed. For me, it was so tricksy and complicated that the true meaning of Salsa was slightly sacrificed along the way.

The thing that made the Mark and Karen Salsa so special was that it still felt like two people having a good time, dancing together, with coherent linking steps and fluid armography. Yes, the performance aspect was there in spades, but it never for a second appeared ‘staged’. To an extent I felt with Kara and Artem’s dance that it was an actual routine, and it lost some of the joyous interaction of two individuals just having fun on the dance floor. Salsa is supposed to have freedom and joy. Kara’s performance had joy in spades, but there was a suspicion of it being IKEA Salsa: slot part A into part B, hammer into place and then on with the next bit!

That said, it was a delight to watch. She really has got the hang of living the dance now, and I think last week’s Paso may well have been a breakthrough performance from her. There’s a hint of real fire inside her, and if she can bring that to all her remaining dances then she deserves to make it to the final.

Pamela made a bit of a comeback this week, as was expected, although it is terribly difficult to shine in the Foxtrot. My opinions on this specific type of dance are well known: I can’t stand it. A really good one will stand out from the crowd but most are either average or dull. It has the appearance of being the most technical of the ballroom dances (I have no idea if this is the case or not), and all that slow-quick-quick nonsense and sticking your head out at an angle that makes you look like a giraffe with a dislocated neck does not appeal.

Whilst Pamela and James did a more than reasonable job it didn’t really sparkle, but that’s just the way this dance goes. I thought she had a good stab at it, looked very glam in her dark outfit, and although there were little wobbles and balance issues at one point it was still good enough to see her comfortably up near the top of the leader board where she has been accustomed to residing. I hope she continues her upward momentum: I know she’s a marmite figure to some, but she is never dull to watch when she takes to the floor.

Which leads me on to Felicity and Vincent. Felicity is pretty much the antithesis of Pamela in most respects. One is classy, cool and sophisticated, whilst the other is fun, brash and effervescent. One can express the nature of every dance in each performance whilst the other can express herself in every dance. I know which is the more pleasing to watch.

I was struck by the theatrical drama and beauty of Felicity’s Paso, inasmuch as a Paso can be beautiful. It was a new slant on a traditional dance, and an interesting one that still retained the feeling of the Paso. However, the dance still requires anger, aggression, violence, passion...and what we got almost felt like a watered down version because of the great artistry in it. Yes, I got the whole ‘Carmen’ vibe but it seemed to lack a considerable amount of guts and gore. I’m not advocating spearing actors and dancers in attempt to attain a sense of authenticity any more than I approve of doing the same to, as Tom Lehrer famously described it, “half a ton of angry pot roast.” But hey, if it improves the flavour of the dance they could maybe have stuck forks into each other during flamenco steps.

She’s clever, is Felicity, and works well to sell what she has. But if she doesn’t start to take it up a notch very soon she’s going to run out of weeks.

I enjoyed Jimi and Flavia very much tonight. Not perfect by a long way, but the Quickstep suited Jimi’s personality and tonight he managed to limit the technical errors to an extent and still perform extremely well. Slowly, it’s beginning to come together. I’m just concerned it’s not happening quickly enough. He clearly loves the ballroom more than the Latin, yet he has the personality that fits Latin better than ballroom! Perhaps this is why a quirky, performance based ballroom dance like this best suits him. He’s still in hold, but the chance to express himself is there too. Some nice choreography from Flavia, I thought, which kept the dance moving nicely around the floor. Certainly his best dance of the contest by a considerable margin.

Urgh. Tweeness alert! If you are of a sensitive nature and find ill-advised attempts at making a dance the embodiment of a chocolate box lid (or several flowery lines in a birthday card you might sent to your Great Aunt Maud), please don’t watch the recap on the results show. It’s difficult to make a Viennese Waltz special. Many have tried, few have succeeded. Matt and Aliona didn’t quite reach the dizzying heights achieved by Alesha/Matthew or Mark/Karen, but it wasn’t so much a matter of the footwork but the choreography. I don’t especially want to stick the knife into Aliona, but...a swing?!? Hanging from a flower decked arbour???

Please, please BBC – can we have a veto against props that need two stage hands to put them together?

A hat: okay. I can deal with a hat. You can do things with hats. You can throw them in the air; you can swap them around, throw them away, put them on the heads of the judges and pull them down tight over their eyes. Sticks: you can do all manner of things with sticks (some of them legal). I even found the unicycle acceptable. But a swing is just going too far. And if you need a swing to set the scene, you’re probably trying too hard to find an angle for a dance that is just basically two people spinning round and round a floor until their breakfast comes up. I’m not being swingist, by the way. I used to have one as a child. But then I was swinging on it, not trying to dance a Viennese Waltz that looked like it was advertising the ‘crumbliest, flakiest chocolate’ in the world...

I guess I ought to say that the bits that didn’t involve copious scenery were actually quite good. I thought the fleckerl was a bit sticky but by and large the dancing was elegant and refined. But – shock horror – I agreed with Alesha on one thing. Matt sometimes looked so intense that I thought his head would explode, like something in the last five minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark. His body is usually fairly relaxed, but his eyes sometimes give the impression he’s just had his fingernails or some other extraneous part of his body removed by large, metal pliers.

There’s not much I can say about Ann and Anton, except that you can expect them to be back next week. In fact you can expect them to be dancing in the 2011 series of Strictly at this rate. Why, you are asking? It’s not like they actually do much in the way of actual dancing! And the answer is: because everyone wants to see what they are going to do next. We’ve had flying Albatross Widdecombe. We’ve had electric floor sweeper Widdecombe. This week we had a ‘No Sex, Please...’ Charleston. Kudos to Anton in skilfully incorporating Anne’s dislike of flashing flesh into the routine and making a joke of it with his comedic attempts to flip her into a cartwheel. I did find it amusing. But when better dancers are surely going to suffer, I find it slightly less amusing.

Fair enough, she’s in it to win it as much as anyone else. I just wonder what would actually happen if she did win! Chris Parker, who was possibly the least talented individual to get to a final (the dance equivalent of Foinavon winning the 1967 Grand National) eventually lost to Natasha in the first series when the public realised it was a joke too far. However, has Anne entered the public psyche to the extent where she might win the whole shebang? And if she did, what then for the show? You may as well bring back ‘It’s A Knockout’ or ‘The Generation Game’...

After last week’s ‘Timewarpgate’ Michelle and Brendan performed a very nice, floaty waltz to a tune that probably gives Rampants up and down the country palpitations at the very sound of it. Yes, the song that was used during the dreaded Ramps rumba that had zillions of fans scurrying to mortgage their houses just to make sure they could pay for all the calls to keep their man in the contest, surfaced once again. Horrible song, but a rather understated and elegant waltz. You couldn’t say it was the most stunning thing you’ve ever seen but it certainly didn’t offend the eyes, and slowly Michelle looks like she’s beginning to understand what it takes to be good at this ballroom malarkey. Just like Jimi she managed to put in her best performance to date, with reasonably good posture and no sign of any gapping between her and Brendan. She is getting better, but the fact she’s repeatedly been in the bottom two tells a story in itself. Sooner rather than later, Michelle is going to exit stage left.

Patsy screwed up again, but conversely she looks a little stronger each week both in herself and in her technique. The ‘Kylie’ look suited her very much (a bit cruel of Craig to suggest chavvy, even if it was amusing), and she has learned to just keep going no matter how hideously it goes wrong and not to show her misgivings on her face. That is the mark of a performer, because it went quite badly for her in the middle of the routine and was fairly painful to watch at times. Credit to Patsy: selling yourself when the world around you tries not to stare in disbelief is a tricky art. Just ask Lady Godiva. Although if she’d attempted a cha-cha-cha I suspect Peeping Tom may well have got more than an eyeful...

SCOTT AND NATALIE ARE NOT INVINCIBLE! I want to shout it from the roofs of every house in the land, and thank goodness they aren’t because nobody likes someone to be good at everything. It makes a person seem more ordinary if they are subject to human frailties like other mortals. If I want to see robotic attempts to conquer the world I will stick ‘Genesis of the Daleks’ into my DVD player. And why were Scott and Natalie flawed and ‘normal’ this evening??? What caused them to fall from the summit of Mount Olympus? Of course: the one thing that cuts most mere mortals down to size – the Strictly weapon of mass destruction, otherwise known as ‘the rumba’.

The fact that he only received a muted ‘Scotttttttttt!’ from Bruno was indicative of the fact that Mr Maslan’s hips moved with the fluidity of a pair of windscreen wipers that had lost their rubbery bits. They went left, they went right, and they went back and forwards as you would expect them to. But it was all jerky, jagged movements and none of the cat-like grace we’ve come to expect from Scott over the last few weeks. The rumba claimed another male victim, smote with the embarrassment factor that this particular dance entails. For those who find it disconcertingly posey and touchy-feely it must be one of the worst experiences you can imagine: like declaring your impotence to millions of viewers up and down the country all in the name of public entertainment!

Craig gave Scott a 4. Whilst this was extremely harsh it didn’t surprise me (he gave Mark a 5 a few years ago), and we are used to Craig using the full range of paddles at his command. Len doesn’t seem to own a paddle under 5, but even so the 9 he gave Scott was even more ridiculous than Craig’s 4! How can he justify giving the same score he awarded Kara’s fabulous Salsa when Scott’s rumba was pretty excruciating to watch at times??? Len, get ye hence to Specsavers is all I can say.

Gavin managed to keep his clothes on this week, which came as a relief. Most people, when they hear the term ‘smashing orangey bit in the middle’ think of Jaffa cakes. I think of Gav’s torso. For all that, I detected a marginal improvement in Gavin this week. He’s still as dull as a ‘Time Team’ dig where the only thing discovered is a heap of mud in a prehistoric ditch, but at least there was an attempt to display some skills this week. Katya has to work with what she has, and it isn’t very much to be honest, but she has done well to utilise what’s there. Now she appears to be realising that she has to crank it up a notch, and that was what she did with the weird rugby inspired/cheerleader cha-cha. Not sure about the rugby ball thing at the start with Hoody Henson spinning it on his finger, but at least the familiarity of the prop appeared to give Gavin some confidence. And there were one or two nice moves amongst the routine, although I do think Katya’s going to have to keep cranking it up, or Gavin’s going to be kicked into touch in the next couple of weeks...