Dancing With The Stars - A Teacher's Perspective, Week 8

By Debra Stroiney

I apologize for not being able to write a blog last week but I was dancing in a competition of my own.

I am sad to see Maurice go this week. I did like his style, his attitude and I related to him because he is a runner and sprinter. It’s amazing to see these Olympic athletes out there competing in a completely different sport and learning a new skill. My favorite quote involved him and Cheryl last week. Cheryl asked why she was running faster than he was during the Quickstep. She was right; he should be using that same push off that he uses when he sprints to propel himself down the dance floor while also keeping it controlled.

The other thing I noticed this week is the music was again off from the character of some of the dances. In many of the dances you want to hear a clear beat and it just was not there. For me the Mambo is all about the music. Cody had some awful song that sounded nothing like a Mambo. He did a great job with it and I think the judges were a little too hard on him.

Some may think that I do not like Brooke because I am hard on her performances. I still think the judges are scoring her too high for some of her performances. I think she does very well and would have no problem recruiting her to train as a professional dancer. We are getting late into the competition now and Len was completely correct in saying that Brooke was not doing heel leads during her Tango. In this competition, she has done many Smooth dances and that should start becoming muscle memory for her. The problem I have (and I had the same thoughts about Kristy during the last season) is a 10 means perfect… Brooke and the other contestants did not have perfect routines this week, so don’t give them a 10. I think that if they are going to pick a winner for this competition they are going to have to start looking a little closer at the dancing and realize that they cannot award a 10 if it is not truly perfect.

Predictions: We are down to four contestants and I am now thinking of who may actually win this. I would have to say Brooke because, as with Kristy, she has the highest scores every week but votes do count. I would really like to know the percentage of votes that each contestant has been getting. I also think that Lance has a good shot if he sticks with some traditional moves but not eliminating the quirky stuff that got him this far. Then again if Cody and Warren get the votes they will be right there with the other two. Warren has been scoring well with the judges but I can see his dancing is not progressing as much as the others. If something has a little more complicated footwork you can tell he struggles but he makes up for it in personality and performance, therefore getting the audience vote. If Lance and Cody work hard on their dancing they have a chance of scoring higher than Brooke but since Brooke is already getting such high scores every week I think she will be hard to beat without having a good percentage of the audience vote.