Dancing With The Stars Prediction

MSNBC thinks Lance Bass is going to waltz away with the mirrored trophy:

"Somewhat lumbering in his NFL-appropriate, but less ballroom-friendly frame, Warren is not the most obviously graceful person in the group. Some football players, particularly Emmitt Smith and Jason Taylor, have been legitimately talented dancers, but Sapp is not. He’s a showboater and a charmer, and he certainly has a great smile. But light on his feet he is not, and the judges will likely ding him hard enough that he won’t have a chance without an overwhelming audience response — which he won’t get. That will leave Lance and Brooke.

Brooke Burke has been the front-runner all season. She’s got the long legs and elegance of a dancer, and particularly because most of the other women (other than Misty May-Treanor, who went out early with an injury in this heavily bandaged season) were not strong dancers, she stood out. Brooke isn’t, however, very entertaining. There is something bloodless about her performances; studied and skilled, but not the kind of dancing that makes you want to watch it again.

Because the entertainment factor is her weakness, it’s especially unfortunate that during last week’s jive, Brooke suffered her first genuine catastrophic dancing failure of the season. You almost never see it on this show, especially late in the season: she simply lost track of what she was doing at certain moments, and she was visibly watching her partner, Derek Hough, to get back on track.

Not only that, but as judge Bruno Tonioli pointed out, the entire routine looked sloppy — bad leg position, bad footwork, and a general lack of grace. That’s okay for Cloris Leachman during a group hip-hop routine, but not for a contestant who’s supposed to be getting by on her superior skills.

This brings us to Lance Bass. Barring a sprained ankle, Lance will take home the trophy. He has the personality of a champion — he’s a direct descendant of Drew Lachey and Apolo Anton Ohno, in particular: guys who started off good, worked hard to get better, and always seemed endearingly plucky in spite of the fact that they were naturals.

Audiences, in the end, are not dance experts. They cannot necessarily identify the right way to hold your foot during a foxtrot, and most of them don’t have any idea how good your tango hold is. No, when it comes to the dance itself, audiences reward two things: agility and novelty. They may not be able to tell the difference between perfect and imperfect waltzes, but they can tell whether a quickstep or a jive was crisp and lively.

Joey Fatone’s strong showing in Season 4 was largely the result of his ability, in spite of his bulky-looking body, to look like he was made entirely of springs as he bounced through a couple of different jives. Season 5 champ Helio Castroneves is best remembered for a loud, exuberant quickstep in which he wore a yellow suit that was gaudy even for a dance costume. We like fast, chandelier-rattling dances, not because we’re uncultured, but because we understand them better.

Again, this plays directly into Lance’s hands. His mambo and jitterbug last week demonstrated that he can move with lightness and speed. At the same time, Brooke completely biffed that jive, the best chance she had to get out from under being the “less fun” contestant."