Kimberley Walsh & Pasha Kovalev

Kimberley has apparently had a virus this week, but has soldiered on and is feeling better.

Zoe: “You were a little bit sad [with a score of 26]”
Kimberley: “I wasn’t sad about the score, I thought it was a really good mark…it’s just that I messed up a few things…didn’t feel like I did my best”

Zoe: “Did [Len’s comments] hurt?
Kimberley: “I can’t really remember really taking the comments on at the time…all I was thinking is I can’t believe I missed the steps”

Zoe: “How did your girl do, on the night”
Pasha: “She did great, but she’s so self-critical…she keeps drilling herself”
Zoe: “It’s a girl thing…how do you pull her out of that?”
Kimberley: “He’s good at doing that, he just makes me laugh all the time…chocolate helps”

Zoe: “Craig did mention your jaw”
Pasha: “I was inspecting that issue from all the different sides and I couldn’t see anything wrong”
Kimberley: “I really don’t need to start having chin obsessions about my jaw…I was really nervous and I think I was just clenched”

A VT of Kimberley’s various facial expressions during training: Smiley, confused, pouty and intense.

Their song is Judy Garland’s “Get Happy” and they’ll be dancing the Quickstep at Hollywood week tonight.

Zoe: “It’s a Quickstep, how quick is it?”
Kimberley: “Pretty quick”
Pasha: “It’s not THAT quick…the dance is Quickstep but the song is slow”

Kimberley: “I just want to enjoy the dance this week”

Lisa Riley & Robin Windsor

Zoe: “Did you enjoy playing a princess last week?”
Lisa: “I loved it, who wouldn’t…I had to be very ladylike, which I tried my hardest”

When asked about her ‘leading’ on Saturday night Lisa replied that when she get’s nervous she tenses up, her arms go solid and she completely locks up.

Zoe: “Your Cha Cha choreography…how are you going to top that?”
Robin: “My brain’s been working on overtime at the moment…I think tomorrow might actually go one further”

A clip of Lisa as ‘Batman’ with Robin, various sound effects and classic 60s Batman on-screen graphics ensue.

It appears they’re dancing to “Hanky Panky” from Dick Tracy, not Hairspray as I suspected, but that certainly gives them some cheeky choreography opportunities. The training clip in the background looks even faster than the one I saw earlier in the week and could be very promising.

Robin: “If one of us misses ONE step it’s all over”

Zoe: “We saw from Denise that [the Jive] is quite dangerous, have you had any injuries?”
Lisa: “It’s a sore subject, but I’ve got three corns…Robin gets annoyed when I start wingeing”

Jimmy the Meerkat

He failed the test last week, when Sid & Ola failed to finish top of the table, but what will his prediction be for this week?

Kimberley & Pasha are his pick for week 3.

Friday Panel

Dionne Warwick, Rufus Hound and Nancy Dell’Olio are this week’s Friday panel.

Dionne has a commerative album out, might have to check it out; Rufus is taking over from James Cordan in ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’; is Nancy promoting a panto Zoe asks?!

Let’s get their views on the training so far.

Louis & Flavia’s Salsa
Nancy: “I met Louis on TV [Unzipped, we saw a repeat last night] a few days ago…I think they definitely will [do well]”

Rufus: “The question is, are they going to do the [Dirty Dancing ending] lift?”
Zoe: “Yes they are!”

Zoe: “Do you think anyone can recreate the magic of Swayze & Jennifer Grey”
Dionne: “No”

Richard & Erin’s Quickstep
Dolly Parton’s ‘9 to 5’ is going to be their song for the Quickstep, a bit slow I think but maybe the band will do a quicker version.

Zoe: “Do you think he’ll be able to stay out of the bottom two this week?”
Rufus: “I think this dance certainly suits him a lot more than the Jive [I think you meant Cha Cha, Rufus]…so long as they don’t dress him in his Nan’s curtains this week”

Fern & Artem’s Charleston
Artem left the competition last year on a Charleston so let’s hope he can do better this year.

Nancy: “I think she’s definitely looking good…I’m sure they will do very good…Artem is a great teacher”

Their song is ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ from Mary Poppins which I think will suit the Charleston.

Victoria & Brendan’s Rumba
Nancy left on a Rumba, how does she rate Victoria’s chances? No answer!

Rufus feels that her performance last week was more like a wounded bird, but thinks if she can actual perform this week it’ll be quite good.

Jerry & Anton’s Quickstep
Their music is ‘Mrs Robinson’, quite apt really though would work better if Anton were younger!

Zoe: “Do you think she’ll be able to bring out the best in this dance?”
Dionne: “Well she certainly has the legs for it”
Rufus: “I think Anton’s the only dancer who is older than Mrs Robinson”

Sid & Ola’s Tango
They’re dancing to Whitesnake’s ‘Here I Go Again’, great song but not sure it’s a tango…

Zoe: “Sid got into trouble with his timing last week, do you think this looks any better?”
Rufus: “If you’ve got that music, and you’ve got Ola, it could be electric…it’s on him…he’s actually really impressive…he’s 40 years old”

Colin & Kristina’s Argentine Tango
Dionne: “He’s hot”
Zoe: “I’ll tell him you said that”
Dionne: “I’m tell him too!”

Nicky & Karen’s Quickstep
Zoe: “He’s had two dodgy weeks, can he bring it back Rufus?”
Rufus: “If he comes out, does the steps, Len’ll praise him”

Rufus has apparently watched the show from the beginning. They have a very quick Quickstep, which concerns me as I think Nicky’s technique is going to really suffer.

Colin Salmon & Kristina Rihanoff

Zoe: “How much did you enjoy your Viennese Waltz?”
Colin: “I really had a great time…one of the reasons I wanted to do the show was to learn how to do Ballroom”

Zoe: “Kristina the judges awarded 6’s, you were a little disappointed”
Kristina: “Yes I thought he deserved higher scores…hopefully they’re going to warm up to us a little bit more”

Zoe: “Have you developed a preference for either [Ballroom or Latin]?”
Colin: “I like Latin…I like the darkness of it…but the Ballroom is romantic”

Kristina: “I’m sorry I can’t grow another 4 inches”

Zoe: “You’re performing consistently well…would you like to see yourself pushed up the leader board?”
Colin: “Yeah I’m competitive so I want to go up…working hard”

Zoe: “Hollywood week…surely as an actor it’s your time to shine?”
Colin: “As an actor I’m sure it is…but Argentine Tango is definitely new territory”

Zoe: “Is it going to be 00-heaven”
Colin: “I hope so”

Colin was recording 8am-11pm Monday to Wednesday, Robin came in later in the week to help them with the lifts.

A quick teaser of their dance: Some nice intensity, though I’m not sure about Colin’s trailing foot during the turns, he also looks like he almost drops her during one of the lines so hopefully they can iron that one out!

You can look for the blog to be updated on Monday morning with my thoughts on the weekend’s action, and for those interested in giving dancing a go we’ve got a Beginner Cha Cha Cha workshop on Sunday afternoon in Eton Wick!

The post It Takes Two – Friday 19th October appeared first on Learn To Dance.

Episode 1 of 4, available until 7:44pm Saturday 27th February 2010

Up first, Rufus Hound – Cheryl Cole’s “Fight for this love”

Interesting outfit from Rufus there, but not bad movement being shown by Rufus, though I’m just waiting for a little bit of comedy to be thrown in…oh wait there it is!

An entertaining performance and I think Rufus is showing good promise, though simple moves can be made to look very good when there’s 30 people up there with you at the same time.

‘The Olympians'(Mark Foster, Iwan Thomas, Leon Taylor, Dalton Grant, Heather Fell and Jamie Baulch) – Madonna “Vogue”

Weird, having just watched Mark Foster in Dancing on Wheels, to flip to the next recorded program and see him in Let’s Dance – he’s obviously been bitten by the dancing bug!

I wonder who’s playing Madonna’s role, obviously it’s the girl of the group, who also appears to be the only one lacking in personality in this performance.

There’s going to be some interesting potential with this group though, given their athletic abilities. Shame about the fall at the end!

Heather shows more personality during Frank’s comments than throughout the whole dance.

Katy Brand – Beyonce “Single Ladies”

I better pay attention to this as I’ve got a wedding group looking to perform this this year!

Not a bad mover there Katy, and again you can tell comedy is her forte!

A good performance that encapsulated the dance and represented the original routine accurately, i’ll definitely be referring back to this one later in the year.

Snooker vs Darts (Dennis Taylor, Willie Thorne, Bobby ‘Bobby Dazzler’ George, Tony O’Shea) – Run DMC vs Aerosmith “Walk this way”

Now this could be good…or a train wreck…!

Unfortunately it does look a little bit like dad’s dancing at a wedding, I’m guessing they didn’t choose this dance themselves.

Shame Bobby ‘Bobby Dazzler’ George keeps on going out of sync with everyone else, and then Dennis Taylor falls over at the end and knocks him down – to top things off!

The first candidates to go home, if the quality of dancing is the basis for the judging.

The Newsreaders (Matt Barbett, Louise Minchin and Ellie Crisell) – “Kiss of Fire” Tango

A little out of time with each other at the start, and Matt really needs to keep his shoulders down.

Poor Louise being thrown around, I’m suprised no-one’s fallen over and an uncomfortable looking ending.

Is Ellie’s skirt supposed to be higher at the back, or has it been turned round accidently?

Casualty (Charles Dale [who plays Big Mac], Tony Marshall [receptionist Noel Garcia], Ben Turner [Jay Faldren]) and Holby (Rosie Marcel [who plays Jac Naylor] and Luke Roberts [Joseph Byrne]) – Slumdog Millionaire “Jai Ho”

A couple of them need to work on their hand shaping, but some quite good performers in there, especially Ben Turner.

Not a bad performance though and they all seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Overview

I think the bottom two (if indeed it comes down to a bottom two – I have to admit I don’t actually know yet!) will be The Newsreaders, and Snooker vs Darts.

Ah, I see, only two going through from each week (which would make sense, two each week for 3 weeks then a 6 group final in week 4!)

In which case I think those going through will be Rufus Hound and Katy Brand – comedy does normally make these performances more entertaining to those at home – and they both did really great performances.

Dance-off and Result

Out then (in no particular order):

The Newsreaders
The Olympians
Snooker vs Darts

The act with the highest votes, and therefore automatically though, is Rufus Hound.

That leaves the final act down to judge votes:

Frank Skinner – Katy Brand
Jason Manford – Caualty & Holby
Kimberley Walsh – Katy Brand

So Katy Brand joins Rufus in the final, as predicted!

Did you enjoy the show?

The post Let's Dance for Sport Relief, Feb 20th appeared first on Learn To Dance.