On Strictly 2021 - Week 1 Dances

[danieldwilliam]

I'm just getting up to date on Strictly 2021.

This is going to be a pretty bare bones review of the situation so far.

I'm not surprised that Adam Peaty & Katya Jones or Rhys Stephenson & Nancy Xu are doing well. Both the celebs seemed pretty good dancers from the pre-season pairing show. Katya is one of the strongest pro-dancers. Nice to see one of the newer pros doing well.

Little surprised to see AJ Odudu top of the leaderboard. Not surprised she's done well but I'd have picked one of Adam or Rhys ahead of her. Again, nice to see a new pro-dancer doing well early doors.

Not hugely surprised at the bottom place. I fear Sara Davies is probably my pick to go out first. Bit surprised at the second and third bottom. Robert Webb will need to up his game quite a lot. I thought he'd be a little better. Ugo Monye is paired with Oti. He's a rugby player and they tend not to do brilliantly - favouring power over agility professionally - but he's not a bad mover for a rugby player. And he's paired with Oti. Mitchel and Webb are one of my top ten comedy duos and I quite like Ugo and I think Oti is one of my top three all time pros. Hoping to see them do better.

Surprised and delighted by John Whaite and Johannes Rabede's dance. It worked really well and I thought leant in to the masculinity of two men dancing together rather wonderfully. I fear the public vote might be lumpy for them but fortunately they are a a good enough pair of dancers to weather any public discord.

I thought Tom Fletcher under performed my expectations and Dan Walker over performed.

Current predicted finalist comes from a pool of AJ, Adam, Rhys, Greg, Tom and I'm not sure - probably one of the other women will sort themselves out but none of them seemed to me to be under-marked. But one of them will get themselves in to the box seat.

Comments

[mountainkiss]

Tom apparently has covid so that might explain it.

(I have not watched this yet.)

[danieldwilliam]

It might well be the reason.

I think he now gets a bye in to the next round.

[alithea]

That's what I read, yes.

Dan Walker surprised me the most I think - I was expecting him to be rather useless, especially as a tall bloke doing quickstep in the first week.

Really impressed by John and Johannes' tango, really hope they get the support to have a proper stab at the competition because I think John will work really hard and I'm intrigued to see what choreography Johannes can throw at him.

[danieldwilliam]

Yeah, I was expecting Dan Walker to suffer from being tall and ungainly and he wasn't particularly.

I'm uncertain about how John and Johannes will get on with the public. Same sex couples ended up being untested last year. However, judging by the quality of their performance on Saturday even if they don't get good public support they are not in much danger of being knocked out early. They should surive any dance-off in the first 3 or 4 weeks. So they've at least got a fighting chance.

[alithea]

That's a good point about surviving dance offs. I was chatting to my pottery tutor last night about it as she's a dancer too, and she was remarking about just how difficult the swapping who was leading aspect of the choreography was so if they carry on in this vein, the judges should continue to be impressed at least. Although she was also saying that in her experience of the dance world, two men dancing together really brings out the homophobia, even when the men in question aren't gay :( We shall see - I suspect most of the muppets I've seen using the awful 'not appropriate for a family show' objection wouldn't actually dream of voting anyway (if they even watch it) and it's just another excuse to air their hatred.

[danieldwilliam]

I think Denise van Outen is my model for this. When she was getting stick from the public because she'd been to dance school she was a strong enough dancer to score well enough to avoid the bottom two most weeks and then surive a few dance-offs to finish as runner up.

I think two men dancing together is exactly the sort of thing that brings out homophobia in Western cultures. Not sure what the cultural expectation is in other cultures.

I think the question of whether it is appropriate for a family show depends on whether we want to include same-sex couples within our definition of families. I've just been reading some stuff in the Captain's school parents' news letter about the equality and diversity and inclusion and was left with the impression that, as far as the Scottish education system was concerned, any LGBT kids would grow up in a school where their sexuality was treated as normal and accepted. IF LGBT folks are going to a normalised part of our society then I don't see how same-sex couples dancing together can be inappropriate - but that is an ideological position that isn't universally shared I think.

What I found closer to inappropriate for a family show was how overtly sexual Nadia Byschova's choreography was in her first season Strictly.

[alithea]

Cathrine was saying that the origins of Tango include a tradition of men dancing it together and given Western culture is particularly big on associating men in physical contact with each as something to be read sexually, while e.g. in the Middle East it is apparently perfectly acceptable for men to hold hands in public despite the general culture being much more homophobic, I think it might be a particularly Western thing. Off the top of my head, it seems to me like a lot of dance cultures elsewhere in the world are far more focused on group dancing than couples.

I don't think you need me to tell you that I heartily agree about LGBT normalisation in schools. And as it happens, I also agree that overtly sexual choreography is what's less appropriate for family viewing. Also not the biggest fan of how some of the judges objectify some of the celebrities...