Strictly: My Dance of the Night

I do love musicals week! Tough choices again tonight but I do love a Charleston and Emma and Anton's was such a classic that I had to choose it, even though Hairspray is among my favourite musicals and I thought Karim and Amy's jive was epic.



Only two more weeks to go!

Strictly: My Dance of the Night

The number of dances to choose from is getting smaller! It felt a bit like all the couples this week were suffering from a Blackpool hangover - lots of good dances but I didn't think anything was going to wow me, until the end. I wasn't sure Chris would be able to pull of a Paso Doble but I really enjoyed it: he played the character well.



I've only got one more Saturday when I can watch this at home and then I'm away for three weekends in a row. I am looking forward to all these events but I'm going to miss cosying up on the sofa for Strictly.

Strictly: My Dance of the Night

Honestly, impossible to choose just one tonight. Everybody brought their A game and it was really spectacular. I love the Blackpool dance floor because (as I'm sure I've said before) you can see the whole thing flexing and moving under the dancers and it's amplified by the fact they all have little teams dancing with them. I really could have picked any of the dances as my favourite this week but I am going with the jive and the charleston...no, the quickstep....no, the American smooth....no, the charleston....!

I was really excited about seeing the jive because they're always great on that bouncy floor. I really loved all the little nods to Elvis throughout and I thought he played the character superbly, as well as being so sharp in all the steps.



Karim and Amy's charleston has to go in because it is pure joy. Every year in my Timehop, a tweet comes up about wanting to save 'Patrick's American smooth' to watch when I am feeling sad because it's just so joyful. I don't remember that dance particularly (I probably blogged it) but this one could be in the same boat.



Saffron's quickstep was great - loved the music. I was even pleased for slightly-creepy-Anton getting his first ever 10s - I can't believe it has taken so long. Also Alex and Michelle were both living their best lives, dancing to their dream songs. Oh, fine - here is the link to the playlist. It's worth watching them all this week, I think.

Strictly: My Dance of the Night

Michelle is just so fierce. She works the camera in a way that only the utterly self-assured person can. This is a great song and a really enjoyable dance to watch.

Strictly: My Dance of the Night

Ooooh, I love a good quickstep. This one had me dreaming of when I eventually become famous enough to be a Strictly star and do the quickstep myself. I'd choose a piece of music quite similar to this one.



I also enjoyed Mike and Katya's charleston and Scarlett and AJ's salsa had me rewinding a bit - the lift where he puts her on his shoulders was impressive, both for its execution and the way he managed to make it seem like it was all meant to go the way it did, even winking at the judges at the end. She is similar in size to him so I suppose it was a marvellous achievement and it did look good. A bit frantic overall for me, though. Seveeeeeeern.

Strictly: My Dance of the Night

I was in that London at the weekend so I didn't watch Strictly live; Sib and I went out to dinner, and I didn't watch the show until Tuesday night, which worked quite well because it's closer to Hallowe'en. I wasn't that taken with it: I prefer the regular weeks. It was also clearly a bit of a bad week for them with two injured participants that made some problems for them. I thought it was really restrained of them not to suggest they'd been cursed.

I picked Michelle and Giovanni's foxtrot for my favourite. They are a really engaging couple and I love the Addams Family. She acts it so well: she's one of those people that always seems to be aware of a camera on her and is therefore able to flirt with it a bit. The older competitors all seem to be doing OK, really.

Strictly: My Dance of the Night

Really very hard to choose last night. There were so many I loved. Will and Janette's contemporary had me bawling, which I can only attribute to being over-tired because I don't normally find it so emotional.

In the end I have narrowed it to two - Karim and Amy's salsa, which was madly frenetic and I was left impressed at the adjustments: I don't think I've ever seen sparkly trainers in the salsa before but this is presumably a height issue. The end lift is so quick I had to rewind to work out what had happened. And his energy! Jealous.



Also Alex and Neil's Charleston was really entertaining.

Strictly: My Dance of the Night last week

Catching up. Last week I liked David's quickstep a lot. I am a sucker for a quickstep and I loved this one because he finally looks like he's starting to relax and enjoy it a bit. It suited his height.



Honourable mention for Kelvin and Oti's rumba. I don't love a rumba but it wasn't at all awkward to watch. He really is very good.

Strictly: My Dance of the Night

Really, really hard to choose this week. They were all very entertaining. I especially loved Michelle's quickstep (that woman is goals) and Dev's couple's choice dance to Aladdin (really fun and he nailed the character) but, surprisingly, it was Catherine's rumba that I wanted to watch again first. I'm not much for the rumba. Shirley said it always makes her feel awkward when it is early on in the series; it makes me feel awkward most of the time because it's so contrived, but Catherine and Johannes nailed it and I think that's why it seemed like everyone was crying. I think he's an excellent pro: he looked so proud of himself last week when Motsi complimented his choreography.

Strictly Come Dancing: My Dance of the Night

A double this week because I forgot to do this last week. I don't normally watch the early episodes because they go on for a really long time, but since I was at home and wanting to knit for the past two Saturdays, watch them I did.

Week 1 - had to be Kelvin and Oti's Samba. I think everybody was just blown away by how good he was for the first week. I loved the shots of Jamie in the audience, clearly being slightly annoyed that he had been replaced by somebody so good at dancing.



Week 2 - I liked a lot of the dances this week, but nothing much stood out for me this week, so it probably has to be Mike and Katya's American Smooth, because it was extremely entertaining. The lifts were predictably risky but I reckon that after Ed Balls, Katya basically has no fear.



I do love Strictly being back. It's just a big part of the routine for autumn.

Strictly Final: My Favourite Showdance

It was a good final. I enjoyed all the dances. I think the right person probably won - the best amateur; everybody likes a journey and Faye and Ashley both had some prior training, blah blah. But my favourite way Faye, I think.

Certainly, I liked her showdance best. Ashley's was very amazing but probably easier to watch live. I liked the quirkiness of the other two, but if when I end up as a Strictly contestant, Faye's showdance is exactly the sort of thing I'd like to do - a bit of Ginger Rogers, a bit of 42nd Street, all that good stuff.

Strictly: My Dance of the Night

What a night! So many dances to choose from. I was very worried that there would end up being a dance off between Stacey and Ashley or, worse, Fay and Ashley, but I think in the end, the right person went home. I know there's a lot of kerfuffle about people with previous dance training getting on well in the show but it doesn't really bother me. It's a light entertainment show. I'm entertained. Job done.

Anyway - this was the most joyful of dances. I liked the little tap notes on the bonnet of the car. I am excited about their show dance next week.

Strictly: My Dance of the Night

It is getting tougher and tougher to choose. I enjoyed them all this weekend; I think I would have sent Joe home but only because I didn't like the way they adapted the song from Joseph, which isn't really fair. I was gutted that Charles went out (sorry, spoiler) and thought it was quite unfair because everybody knows the rumba is the curse of the male celeb, so giving him that in the quarter final seemed a bit vicious. I thought he did a stellar job, and even better in the dance off.

But the night did belong to Faye and Giovanni. And their goats, of course. Whoever was doing the one on the right got the string tangled up. 'I thought the goats were very good,' intoned Craig. 'You were quite good too, darling.'

Strictly: My Dance of the Night

This week the dance of the week crown must go to Stacey and Kevin, who managed to camp up the paso to such a degree I almost laughed. Particular favourite bits include the 'talk to the hand' and when Kevin plays with her skirt. I saw that they struggled with this one in training so I wondered if the choreographer made it deliberately just on the edge of a parody to make it more palatable. I do love a good paso to a really traditional track, it must be said,



However, I cannot let this week pass without also mentioning the fantastic effort of the live band covering House of Pain's 'Jump Around' - a song integral so to my youth, we had a dance to it. It's all samples in the original (as far as I can tell) so trying to score it for live playing must have been a nightmare; though a little research tells me the squeal played at the start of each bar is actually a tenor sax and not some scratch of a record, so it was probably a little easier than I thought. I wasn't an enormous fan of the dance (high energy, though - good job) but hat's off to the band.

Strictly: My Dance of the Night

CONTROVERSY this week, as I go for the pro dance. I absolutely adored Gloria Estefan as a kid and had her greatest hits album, a fact I had actually forgotten until I saw this number (all my albums got stolen when Mother Hand moved house, in the days before digital music was really a thing, so I have only replaced what I've remembered...hence the gap which I shall be addressing shortly).



Truthfully, this pro dance gets me out of a hole as no way could I even narrow it down to two this week. I can't remember a season I have enjoyed as much as this one. Stacey's salsa, Fay's paso doble, Joe's quickstep, Ashley's jive and Charles's samba - all joint top for me. Graeme's sheer pleasure in dancing the jazz theatre was also delightful to watch. And Kate and Lauren came a very close third to all of this. Impossible to choose.

The final is going to be incredible.

Strictly: My Dance of the Night

It's getting quite tough to pick a favourite now. I don't think it's very clear who will end up going home tomorrow although I imagine it will be Charles and Karen because they keep ending up in the Dance Off.

I loved Faye and Giovanni's retro 40s jive a lot, but in the end it has come down to two that I can't decide between.

Ashely and Pasha's contemporary is worth watching again. It was really moving: I think the judges were crying by the end too, not just Shirley. She's an excellent dancer and this was very entertaining.



At the opposite end of the spectrum, though, was that salsa by Graeme and Oti. What a weird choice of song for them! It really seems very fast and difficult to dance to. It looked like a couple of the lifts went awry, too, but for sheer entertainment value I couldn't let it pass.

Strictly: My Dance of the Night

So look, I know he went all kinds of wrong but I really loved Danny John-Jules's quickstep. It actually made me pick up my phone and vote for the first time this year.



I didn't notice what the mistakes were the first time round, though it was clear he went out of time with Amy a few times. But I love a quickstep, he has some killer style in there, and he sells it really, really well - Bruno said this in the feedback. I half wish they end up in the dance-off so that he can have another crack at it, but then, I wouldn't want him to go up against someone else that I want to stay in.

Special mention must be made of Kate's dress, which might be my favourite outfit ever on Strictly. I love this combination of bright blue and red. Hopefully when I am famous enough to be on Strictly, I hope they give me an outfit that's very similar.

I can't find a good picture of it. Here's a good one, but curiously, in a lot of them the red belt is missing, which makes it much less amazing imo. I guess these were maybe posed before the live show.

I love the red lining and the shape on the neckline.

Here is a bad picture of it with the red belt.

Strictly: My Dance of the Night

Ashley's Charleston was very enjoyable and Stacey was superfierce, but the winner has got to be Faye's jazz dance. I can't stop watching the bit on the toes. You know, that bit on the toes? Amazing.

Strictly: My Dance of the Night

So hard to choose today! I really loved Ashley's rumba and also Danny's jive was incredible. However, Stacey's samba was the one I wanted to rewind and watch again. I thought she played it really well.

Strictly: My Dance of the Night

Really tough competition this week, mainly because there wasn't anything I was desperately taken with but there were quite a lot of good dances that I enjoyed. I nearly picked Dr Ranj's paso but I tended to agree with whichever judge it was that said it felt a bit like Janette was placing him and dancing around him - no problem for me, I really love Janette's dancing so I could watch that all day long, but that's not really in the spirit of the thing I guess.

So, I'm picking Charles and Karen's salsa, not least because he has been in the bottom two twice and therefore might go home soon.



I thought they did it better in the dance off, where they nailed that last lift. It must have been a bit of a shock to Charles when Karen adjusted her grip to compensate for the miss on this version.

Really love this song too, which helps.