Dancing With The Stars - Week 2

A Teacher's Perspective

By Debra Stroiney, Former Fred Astaire Dance Studio instructor and currently taking care of franchise business at the Fred Astaire Dance Studio Corporate Office

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Today we will have our first elimination from the show. Other than the top 3 scores; it could be anyone….

I cannot believe how many injuries there are on the show this season. I would really like to see all of the footage of the rehearsals over the past month to obtain better insight as to why this is happening. A couple of theories: the stars are not learning the correct way to hold their bodies, use their feet and do tricks. They are not being taught to dance but rather are being thrown into things their bodies are not used to doing. Dancing a performance with adrenaline pumping can lead to injuries if you are not trained or used to dancing aggressively.

There was an improvement in all the dancers this week. We also started seeing who is better at Smooth or Rhythm dancing. Some dancers had a solid performance in both types but there are three contestants who I think will be at the top of the scoreboard for the entire season: Shawn, Melissa and Gilles. Each of these stars has performed very well in smooth and rhythm. The judges’ scores have also reflected it. Now we have to wait to see who the audience votes for. I think these three really have something special, and I hope that it continues through all the dances this season so that there truly is a competition on the dance floor.

Here are the things that will never change on the show and I will never understand why it happens:

• The judges are hard on the dancers who actually put in a solid performance and did well. Are they trying to motivate them or do they just not like them?


• Having beginner dancers perform Quick Step in the second week of competition. I will never understand this since it is one of the most difficult dances to learn. To make up for this, the choreography contains patterns that diverge from the traditional way of doing this dance. They also add tricks to improve on what would usually be a mediocre performance.


• The music. There were some pretty interesting ideas this week as to what Salsa and Quick Step music is.