Dancing With The Stars

Okay so I had never seen Dancing With The Stars before this season. When I started ballroom dancing it was something that I was vaguely aware of but really had no desire to watch. Students bring in videos all time of dances from that show that bear no resemblance to actual dancing. They have fun tricks and fancy set pieces but for the most part Dancing With The Stars is not dancing. But the existence of Alyson Hannigan on the show this season has broken me down and we are watching, so here are my very qualified thoughts. Please remember this is coming from an internationally certified ballroom dance instructor who is also a rhythm champion and a smooth and standard finalist.

#1

The judges (except for Derek) have no idea what they are talking about. Not a single one of them has any ballroom dance experience, not a competition, not a certification, nothing. They are commercial dancers and there is exactly 0 crossover between commercial dancing and ballroom dancing. Everyone actually qualified to judge a ballroom competition is off judging ACTUAL ballroom competitions. That also means that their scoring is all over the place and wildly inaccurate most of the time. They either score people WAY too high, or upsettingly low based on absolutely nothing. They’ve got no credibility whatsoever and all contestants should listen to Derek and take everyone else’s feedback with a massive grain of salt.

#2

These pros are questionable at best. Some of them are very good dancers while others are mediocre. The women don’t seem to know how to teach for shit, most of them just dance around their men while their men stand there and pose. Or they throw in a million lifts so that they can hide the fact that these dudes can’t dance and the pros couldn’t be bothered to teach them. They also lose credibility when they say things like “this week we are doing a jive” and it's actually an East Coast swing (kicks does not equal jive). Or when they do a Tango on “Latin Night”...It is their responsibility to know what all the dances are and in which category they fall and they don’t seem to have a firm grasp on that very basic and remarkably easy concept.

#3

The choreography. Now I get that the pros are theoretically choreographing to their star's strengths but some of them are just really bad choreographers. That is an entirely separate skill then dancing, and a separate skill from teaching. And in order to be a good pro on this show you need to possess all three skills and some of these pros possess only 1 at best. Also the choreography for the big pro numbers at the beginning is also really mediocre. They are relying really heavily on the camera work to make them look good and that’s just really sad. They should have actual professional ballroom dancers come guest spot as choreographers. I promise you every rising star or open competitor across this country could choreograph better dances then what we’ve been seeing.

#4

The show does NOT teach its star’s how to dance. They teach you a new routine every week, with very little focus on concepts or technique. Nothing these stars are learning is applicable to the real world and that’s upsetting. They are literally coming out of this competition with nothing useful.

The show would be more entertaining if I didn’t know what I was talking about. But honestly right now it's actually physically painful. I am living for Jason Mraz and Xochtil Gomez (also Ariana, Adriana?) because they are truly phenomenal. But everyone else should…take some actual lessons after the show.