And here we are, half way through the competition! Weird night with the judges. I disagreed a couple of times tonight with their take on things. Overall it was a solid night in the ballroom now that the not-so-good dancers have all been sent home. And, making it even better was the chests on display (Tony, Mark and most especially Derek–shown above with Shannon)!
Here’s my take of tonight’s dances, in order of performance:
- Mario & Karina: A great opening for the show. It was a solid samba and he was very into it. It broke the mold of the “sameness” that Len complained about last week. Quite possibly his best dance so far.
- Priscilla & Louis: After several weeks of improvement, Priscilla seemed to take a step back this week with the rumba. The splits were great and the choreography was good. I just didn’t buy the romance between them at all.
- Marissa & Tony: After a fantastic paso doble last week, Marissa shows no signs of slowing down. Her samba was spot on, with lots of great hip action and other samba moves. It was her best dance yet. It’s great to see her coming on strong!
- Cristian & Cheryl: Such a sensual rumba. I was stunned at how low the scores were because this gave me goosebumps.
- Marlee & Fabian: A clunker for Marlee tonight. The fast samba challenged her ability to get through the dance without being able to hear the music. There were two are three missteps where she lost her way. To her credit, she kept powering right through. The dance, when done right was great. Fabian gave her solid choreography.
- Kristi & Mark: Another great performance from these two. A beautiful rumba and Kristi was surprising with her ability to embrace the romance and really play that character.
- Shannon & Derek: Did I mention how hot Derek looked? Extreme disagreement here with the judges. I thought this was a fantastic samba with dazzling moves, great musicality. I was very in to it and, well, the judges weren’t.
- Jason & Edyta: And I thought this over-scored. It was a decent enough dance (Will put it very well saying it was a very ballroom-y rumba). I thought Jason also looked a little clunky here. He said he wasn’t very comfortable with some of the movements, simply because he wasn’t used to moving that way and he looked it.
Best dances: For the samba, I give it to Shannon & Derek. For the rumba, it was Kristi and Mark. In terms of bottom two, I’m going with Priscilla and (as much as it pains me) Marlee. I think Priscilla will go home.
Results Update: Priscilla was the right choice. Interesting that Cristian ended up in the bottom two, but I’m okay with that because I really wanted to see Marlee to continue. Overall, the results show was dull tonight. I wasn’t really into the musical guests, although the dances with the music were both great. The child dancers were fun again, but on the whole something was just off in result show land tonight.