Apparently John O’Hurley’s fans aren’t the brightest bulbs in the, uh, bulb box: link.
Oy vey I’m getting pissed with how they decide who gets voted off on this show. Joey hangs on from last week with that awful performance, and Rachel “Queen of the Splits” gets hosed? This show is nothing but a popularity contest that will be won by the soap star even if she breaks a heel…
I think they should have O-Hurley and Charlotte host this thing next year. They have such good chemistry. I hate the “comedian” they have hosting this thing.
I’m glad I thought to look over here for more discussion of Dancing With the Stars - I don’t usually frequent Cafe Society.
Statement of bias up front: I’ve been ballroom dancing for 17 years, and Charlotte was my coach for the last 4 or so. (I’m on hiatus at the moment since moving cross-country). She is widely regarded as probably one of the best ten ladies ever in ballroom dancing, and she’s also really making a name for herself as a topnotch coach, now that she’s retired from competition.
While I like Rachel better than Joey, I’m not that surprised she was voted off this week. She’s a nice dancer, but she’s not really a ballroom dancer - she doesn’t have the whole lead-follow thing down yet. John O’Hurley is really the only contestant who appears to be consistently leading (or following). He’s dancing routines, but you can tell that he’s doing the steering, and that Charlotte is actually following him, making even his flubs look like “I meant to do that.”
I was sad to see Evander go. He was just a big ol’ huggy bear. That said, I laughed myself sick when I saw on another board, “Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee. Dance like a dromedary.”
Kelly was not looking great in the first couple of weeks, but I am impressed with how much progress she’s making. She’s obviously listening to the judges and working on what they tell her to do, and she is much improved. I was very impressed with how well she handled the “wardrobe malfunction” (and I’m sure the ABC execs heaved a sigh of relief that she didn’t flash the world on primetime TV). Alec is serious eye candy - I hope John gives him that Speedo they keep talking about.
Joey is OK, but his posture is really bad. Both he and Evander have been hurt by their partners’ trying to keep them on the routine, instead of just following when they start to mess up. Ashly has been doing better at this than Edyta did, though.
Just curious - has anyone here gotten more interested in competitive ballroom dancing, either to watch or to do, as a result of this show? I’m wondering what effect it’s going to have on the ballroom world, if any.
Oh, and a comment on the scoring - “real” ballroom competitions are scored by having each judge rank the couples, and then the scores are combined in a moderately complicated system that is designed to make it difficult for a single judge to have much effect on the result. So converting the raw scores into ordinals is actually at least similar to the traditional scoring of a ballroom competition.
Yes, actually.
Did you just move to Seattle or just move from Seattle, and is there anywhere out here to try it?
I just moved to Seattle, and there are plenty of places out here to try it. I would start with the USA Dance Seattle chapter to look for places to go dancing. There are a number of pretty good coaches out here. Next weekend is also the regional amateur championships, if you’re interested in watching a live competition. It looks like at least two of the expected finalists for nationals are entered in the amateur standard on Saturday night. I’m not as familiar with the names for latin (Sunday night), but there are usually some big names present at each of the regionals.
Thanks for the inside scoop, ENugent! That must be extremely cool to see your own coach on the show – and doing so well! Are the other five coaches/partners at anywhere near her level of expertise/renown? Thanks also for some informed commentary on how the various dancers really are doing – your point about which female pros are really following and which aren’t was interesting, and something I definitely don’t know enough to pick up on.
As far as changing my interest in ballroom dancing – not really. I’ve run into it from time to time over the years (PBS shows, Baz Luhrman’s Strictly Ballroom, etc.) – but find it as interesting, if not more, as a subculture, rather than as an art form/competition venue. (My lifelong love of movie musicals led me to take up not ballroom but tap, 15, yikes, 17 years ago.)
I don’t object, per se, to a complicated scoring system – I follow figure-skating – what pisses me off about this show is that the informed votes of the judges can be thrown over by the popularity votes cast by soap fans and nostalgic boy-band aficianados.
Louis Van Amstel (Trista’s partner) is probably as well-respected in latin as Charlotte is in standard, as a dancer if not as a coach. It’s too bad we didn’t get to see more of him.
I do think it’s a shame that the audience vote counts for as much as it does - but I also didn’t agree that Rachel deserved scores quite as high as she got. I actually liked Kelly better this week, which surprised me, since I hated her in the first couple of weeks.
Strictly Ballroom was a wonderful movie, and all too accurate a portrait of some aspects of the subculture. The Japanese version of Shall We Dance showed very well how students get sucked into ballroom dancing - I would recommend it if you haven’t seen it.
My best friend loves to ballroom dance, but I can’t get her to watch the show. She says she likes to dance, not watch others. She doesn’t compete, but dances at every opportunity. She has a hard time finding partners now, because she’s a M>F transexual. She’s a strong lead and doesn’t like dancing with men and most women don’t want to dance with her. But she has a few reliable partners and dances whenever her Ballroom Dance Club has a get-together. I think she’d enjoy watching the show, though. And I’ve threatened to sit on top of her and make her watch Strictly Ballroom.
StG
I have no rhythym, but have always loved to watch others dance. Ballroom, tap, modern, ballet, any type of dancing.
Saw it and liked it very much. Boycotted the Lo-Gere remake on principle.
Do you think ABC will get bigger stars next year since it is such a hit?
I’d actually started taking ballroom dance lessons with the gentleman I’m been dating not long before this show came out, which is why I started watching it. I then did something nebulous and highly unpleasant to my knee, and have been on crutches for the past 3 weeks! :eek: Between this, the Japanese version of Shall We Dance and the American, I’m rather interested in the idea of getting more interested in ballroom dancing, but the gentleman’s not so sure. I’ve enjoyed doing it, though and I’m looking forward to when my knee’s healed up enough to do it again.
I’m not thrilled about the voting system either, in part because I don’t like Kelly Hunter, either. I would assume that, in the event of a tie, whoever got the higher score from the judges would stay. The thing is, Kelly Hunter doesn’t look like she’s enjoying herself. John Herlihy obviously does, but he strikes me as a complete, lovable ham. I think he also has the best partner.
So, any takers on who gets kicked off this week and who wins? There is a huge contingent of soap opera fans out there, and I suspect that, as the show gets publicity, that contingent will only grow larger. USA Today had an article on the show on Wednesday, and I think it might even have been mentioned on the cover. Here’s my scenario for how it plays out:
I figure Joey will get kicked off this week, leaving John and Kelly next week. John should win it, but the soap opera fans will vote en masse, making Kelly the winner.
Any takers?
CJ
It’s Kelly Monaco. She might get a lot of votes from General Hospital fans, then again there are enough GH fans that hate her and would love to see her fall on her face. Perhaps those ones don’t bother watching though. She does have the advantage in that both are on ABC so if her GH fans see the ads during GH they may be more inclined to tune in and vote for her.
I have only seen one show though but from what I gathered John O’Hurley is charming, funny and also a pretty good dancer so I’m hoping he can win the whole thing.
John O-Hurley and Charlotte should host this thing!
I think it’s likely, but I’d still watch if they stuck with the B list. (Or is it the C list?)
I think it’s the C list.
I think it’s the D-list. 
I think Joey will be booted off on Wednesday - foxtrot and paso doble are both going to be very strong dances for John, and weak for Joey. He can get the “feel” of 1940’s swing pretty well, but I can’t see him as a matador. And his posture was improved in the samba, but it’s going to be a lot tougher to maintain in a standard dance than in latin. I do think that Kelly is going to win it overall, because the audience vote is the tiebreaker. So if a couple is first with the judges and second with the audience, they lose in the finals. Actually, John really needs Kelly to beat Joey with the judges this week in order to stay in, if the audience vote is going Kelly-Joey-John (seems likely based on past results). That would mean that the two most likely scenarios for scores this week are
Case 1 (Judge score + audienc score = total score)
Kelly 2 + 3 = 5
Joey 1 + 2 = 3 -> Joey loses
John 3 + 1 = 4
Case 2
Kelly 1 + 3 = 4
Joey 2 + 2 = 4
John 3 + 1 = 4 -> John loses (audience vote tiebreaker)
I read somewhere that when John O’Hurley’s agent got the call about a new reality show, they assumed that they wanted him as a host, not as a contestant. I think he’d make a great host for the next series. Charlotte would be better than that insipid co-host that they’re using now, but she might rebel and refuse to ask stupid questions like, “Why is it important to get good scores from the judges?” I doubt that she’d want to take the time to do it, though. It’s one thing to put all your students on hold while you’re dancing on prime-time TV, and another to do it while you’re just standing around the kiss-and-cry area for thirty seconds with each couple.
OTOH, if she were handling the kiss-and-cry, it wouldn’t be a big investment of her time – a half day, once a week. She could schedule her other stuff around it.
I don’t see them getting hugely bigger celebs for this – Denzel Washington and Cate Blanchett both have better things to do – but I’m not sure they necessarily need them. The fun of it is watching the “IANAD” folks try to become dancers in, er, jig time. Slight familiarity and a heapin’ helpin’ of likeability is all the “stars” need.