James Jordan's Strictly Blog: My Week 4 Scores and Why the Judges Are Too Nice For My Liking
Welcome to week four of my column for WhichBingo. Fourteen couples left, another elimination done, and plenty to get into on the scoring, the pairings, and a bit of news from me and Brendan too.
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My Scores from Week Three
Lacey Turner and Vito Coppola, Samba. My score: 5. Judges: 6, 6, 7, 7.
Over-marked for me. The samba is one of the hardest dances on Strictly purely down to the technique involved. I understand why this opened the show, it’s a fantastic track, great costumes, and Vito has so much bounding energy. But Lacey looked a bit ploddy throughout.
She managed the bend in her knees but kept forgetting to straighten back up into the flexed leg, which is the actual technique of a samba, so she didn’t quite have it. At times it looked like she was being dragged round the floor, relying entirely on Vito’s energy rather than bringing her own. As a performance I enjoyed it, but technically it wasn’t there.
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Will Best and Dianne Buswell, Waltz. My score: 6. Judges: 6, 6, 6, 7.
Scored a mark lower than the samba above, even though this was no question the better dance of the two. I thought it was beautifully simple. I loved the costumes, the music, the darkness of the whole thing, and it was genuinely touching. Well done to Dianne for creating something without throwing the kitchen sink at it, which is exactly the kind of routine people want to see on Strictly.
Will did a great job, his best dance of the series so far, though he still looks a little wooden and needs to soften up.
Shaun Wright-Phillips and Alexis Warr, Quickstep. My score: 2. Judges: 3, 4, 3, 5.
What can I say? Alexis is fantastic, but no amount of talent on her part was going to hide how bad this was. Bad posture, no drive from the standing leg, feet everywhere, gapping badly, steps forgotten, off the timing throughout. The best part of that dance was when it finished.
Cach Mercer and Maddie Ingoldsby, Couple’s Choice. My score: 7. Judges: 7, 8, 8, 8.
Shock horror, a professional street dancer is good at street dance. What actually shocked me more was how good Maddie was in this, considering it’s completely outside her comfort zone. She’s a brilliant addition to the Strictly family and this showed real versatility.
For me though, this style of dance has no real place on Strictly. People might be wowed by it, but there’s not much actual partnering skill beyond a couple of tricks. I want to watch ballroom and Latin, not street dance.
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Jaime Winstone and Carlos Gu, Viennese Waltz. My score: 7. Judges: 7, 7, 7, 7.
Loved this one, the track, the costumes, the choreography. Carlos did a fantastic job putting something quite special together, and it was danced to a high level overall.
Jaime does need more softness through the top of her body though, she can look wooden, and her head position needs work too. She was also a little skippy through the movement, which is tricky when the Viennese waltz is moving that quickly. I watch her with a bit of trepidation, half expecting it to go wrong, so I never quite feel settled watching her. I loved the dance from them regardless, and I don’t think they’ll be anywhere near the bottom two this week.
Melanie Walters and Aljaž Škorjanec, Charleston. My score: 2. Judges: 3, 5, 4, 5.
Over-marked. Such a shame, because Melanie seems like a lovely lady and Aljaž is a true gentleman, but that was possibly the worst Charleston I’ve ever seen on this show. There wasn’t any real Charleston technique in it, and for the rest of the routine she was just plodding around moving her feet, you couldn’t really call it dancing.
This is always the problem when a non-trained dancer is up against practically professional partners elsewhere in the competition. I’ll say this too, at this stage the judges seem to be telling everyone they’re good when clearly some of them aren’t. There’s nothing wrong with saying someone isn’t good at something, that’s how they go away and work on it.
Dame Sarah Storey and Julian Caillon, Paso Doble. My score: 4. Judges: 4, 5, 5, 6.
This slightly surprised me, I quite enjoyed it considering she’s one of the celebrities with no professional training behind her. Well done to Julian for building a routine that was entertaining and hid a multitude of sins. It was a bit stompy and walky, which a paso can be to some extent, but there wasn’t much actual dancing or fluidity in it. Overall though, better from her this week.
Delta Goodrem and Kai Widdrington, Salsa. My score: 8. Judges: 8, 9, 8, 8.
Best dance of the night by some distance. She has an ease to her dancing that I love, and she’s always fully committed. Loved the routine, the costumes and the partnership between them. Just needs a touch more softness in the connection and to stay a bit more compact in the movement. Well done.
Lawrence Robb and Jowita Przystał, Rumba. My score: 5. Judges: 5, 5, 4, 6.
As a performance I quite enjoyed this, it was romantic and Jowita looked amazing. There wasn’t much basic rumba action in there though, and he looked awkward doing it. Jowita was clever here, she played to the public rather than the judges, stripping out content in favour of the performance, and I think that worked for her, even if it’s always going to be hard to mark a dance like that highly.
Dani Dyer and Nikita Kuzmin, Tango. My score: 6. Judges: 7, 7, 6, 7.
Nikita said in his VT the tango is one of the hardest dances, which just isn’t true, it’s one of the easiest to teach a celebrity, if not the easiest. This dance was a good example of how much easier it is for the female celebrities than the male ones. A strong male pro like Nikita can lead his partner around the floor and make her look better than she actually is, you can’t do that the other way round with a female pro and a male celebrity.
As a performance it was great, the costumes, the lighting and the drama were all there, though her posture needs work, at times she barely seemed to have a neck with her shoulders so high, and her feet and legs need attention too. Even with the negatives, I enjoyed it and loved the ending, properly dramatic.
Graeme Hall and Lauren Oakley, Jive. My score: 6. Judges: 6, 6, 6, 7.
I agree with Shirley on this one. There was plenty of good jive content and recognisable basic steps, but as a performance I was a little underwhelmed. Given how much ballroom and Latin he’s danced previously, and with a teacher as good as Lauren, I expected more. He made a couple of mistakes but recovered well, it was a decent jive, just not a great one.
John Nellis and Katya Jones, Cha-cha. My score: 4. Judges: 4, 5, 5, 6.
Another nice routine from Katya, all the work on the chair was brilliant, right up until the actual cha-cha started, which was a bit awkward and rigid with no fluidity in the movement. He looked more exposed in a rhythmical dance like this. I still like them as a couple, I just didn’t love this one.
Bethany Antonia and Nancy Xu, American Smooth. My score: 5. Judges: 6, 7, 7, 7.
Way over-marked for me. I wasn’t really a fan of this, it felt a bit messy, and I’d have liked to see much better footwork driving through the heels.
Watching Bethany dance, and I understand the appeal of two women dancing together, I do keep thinking she’d have been exceptional paired with a strong male lead like Aljaž. A female professional is never quite going to lead the way a top male professional can, and you lose a bit of that masculine and feminine contrast in the dance partnership. That’s not about anyone’s sexual orientation, it’s simply that the partnership would look different in terms of power and strength, not look, and I think she’d have been brilliant with someone like him.
Tabby Stoecker and Mark Karmalita, Argentine Tango. My score: 8. Judges: 8, 8, 7, 8.
What a brilliant performance, real intensity to it, and it was clean and precise rather than over-complicated, with brilliant tricks executed really well. Mark is proving to be a great addition to the Strictly family as a male pro. Well done to both of them.
Looking back over the week, I’d have scored Shaun Wright-Phillips and Melanie and Aljaž as my bottom two before the results, and in the end it was Melanie and Aljaž who went, with Shaun surviving. Honestly, it could have gone either way, neither performance was particularly good, it came down to the judges’ call rather than one of them being clearly better. I don’t think either is destined to become a brilliant dancer at this point, though I think Shaun might get a stay of execution if he lands a kinder dance like the Charleston further down the line.
Who I’m Backing From Here
Delta and Kai remain the benchmark for me, that salsa was the best dance of the week by some margin. Tabby and Mark are right up there too after their Argentine tango, and I think both couples are heading for the business end of the series.
Cach is still very much in my thinking as well, even when the dance itself strays from what Strictly’s supposed to be. We still haven’t found this year’s proper entertainer though, someone who isn’t a great dancer but is must watch television anyway, in the mould of an Ed Balls. Until someone fills that gap, I think the public vote is going to keep rewarding the trained dancers almost by default.
My Thoughts on the Show So Far
Are the producers stacking the odds?
I’ll say it plainly, the producers know exactly which celebrities can dance and which can’t before they ever pair anyone up. It doesn’t matter how good a teacher you are, you’re not turning someone with no rhythm or training into a contender. If you’re handed someone fully trained, the production team already knew they were giving you someone capable of going a long way.
History backs this up. Darren Gough won series three with Lilia Kopylova, and Mark Ramprakash won the following year with Karen Hardy, and back then the whole point was taking someone who’d never danced and watching them improve week on week. That’s genuinely what Strictly is supposed to be about. The more people they bring in who already have serious dance or stage training, the more it just becomes a professional dance competition rather than the show people fell in love with.
Take last year’s champion, Karen Carney. The story pushed every week was that she’d never danced before, but as a professional I could see in week one that she clearly had, nobody lands a double spin like that without training. I’d like to see a lot more transparency about who’s actually had dance experience before they start, because at the moment it isn’t a level playing field, whatever the VTs try to tell you.
The Graeme question
People keep asking why Cach gets all the love while Graeme, who’s also doing well, doesn’t get the same reaction. I think it’s simply that Graeme’s older, so people look at him and assume he’s just a sweet older gentleman giving it a go. In reality he’s competed in ballroom and Latin at senior level for years, you can find a long list of his competitions online.
We were always told you weren’t supposed to come onto the show with that kind of background. I don’t think it’s ageism exactly, more that the public just aren’t clocking it because of how he’s perceived. He didn’t do a brilliant job this week either, it was safe and competent rather than spectacular, so maybe that’s evening itself out a little.
Is Shirley harder on the younger girls?
There’s a theory going round that Shirley marks the younger female contestants harsher than everyone else, and this week it was Tabby and Dani who copped her lowest scores. I think it’s more about expectation than gender. If she knows someone like Dani has had dance training and is young and fit, she’s going to expect more from her than from someone double her age with no background in it.
Looking at the actual numbers, I gave Dani and Nikita a six myself and genuinely wasn’t blown away by them this week, and when you check, Shirley also gave Lawrence and Jowita her lowest mark of the panel too, and he’s not a young woman. So I don’t think it’s as simple as the public narrative suggests. I’d also say she’d be silly to blatantly mark women down when she’s already had this exact criticism before, that’s not a position she’d want to put herself in again.
My advice for the pros
If I was advising any of the less experienced dancers on the show right now, it would be this: stop worrying about the judges, worry about the public. The audience at home don’t know a correct rumba walk from a wrong one, they just know whether they’ve been entertained.
Get the public on your side and you’re safe, it’s as simple as that. You’re probably not going to out-dance the fully trained couples, so don’t try to compete on technique, go out and be your own version of an Ed Balls instead. Entertain them.
Standing by Brendan
Brendan’s taken some real stick for comments he made about Amy’s choreography with Chris, and I know it’s genuinely upset him. All he said, in his own column, was that he didn’t think she’d done a particularly good job with the choreography. That’s an opinion about dancing, not an attack on her as a person, but it got picked up and turned into a headline, and then people ran with it.
We get paid to give an honest opinion. I do the same every week in this column, loving a couple one week and not loving them the next. I have colitis myself, in the same family of conditions as Crohn’s, and that doesn’t mean nobody’s allowed to say anything critical about my work either. It’s been blown out of all proportion, and he’s genuinely gutted about it, because it wasn’t meant the way it’s been read.
Keep one head judge, and let Craig be Craig
Like I’ve said before, I think one head judge who sticks around is far better than passing the role round each week, it just gets confusing. I also think the way Craig gets reined in and told to soften up is all a bit panto now. He was one of my favourite judges because he was brutally honest, and I’d like to see more of that honesty from the whole panel, not less.
I want to see the judges go back to basics — it’s all a little bit panto for me. It’s all a little bit scripted. I want to see them being a bit more honest, like Craig. He was always one of my favourite judges because he was so brutally honest. Now he always says it on the positive. Why? I don’t know. Because people are going to have mental breakdowns because they were told that cha-cha isn’t good? Maybe. Bit weird for me. Some of the younger generation are a little bit precious it seems.
That backflip
I have to mention Shirley’s backflip on the results show. There’s absolutely no chance that was her doing those moves, not even a tiny bit, maybe a five-year-old would believe it. But credit where it’s due, it looked brilliant, and it was a fun bit of telly either way.
Life on the road, and a new chapter with Brendan
We’re currently on tour with Legends in Vegas: After Hours, and the fact we’re still selling out theatres when the five of us are nearly two hundred and fifty years old combined is pretty amazing. I left Strictly back in 2013, and people still want to see the old pros who were big characters doing our thing, unfiltered, because this isn’t a BBC show, so we can really say what we want.
My body’s holding up, just about, I’m carrying a fair few injuries these days, which is part and parcel of getting older in this job. On top of that, Brendan and I have just announced our own book together, called Dance Rebels, and a new UK tour to go with it called Dance Rebels: Strictly Unleashed, around fifty dates up and down the country next year. Keep an eye out for that one.
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In case you missed it, you can catch up with last week’s Strictly blog..
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