Harry Judd & Aliona Vilani
1st Impression - this looks good! Harry has nice arm placements in New York position, good weight placement and good posture. It is difficult to tell but it looked like there were some good basic elements in the choreography too like, the Natural Top - I hope his footwork for this step is technically sound as it is a very difficult basic step to do well. I am slightly concerned about Harry's lack of hip action or natural body rhythm present at the moment but to see everything in less than 20 sec of footage is impossible. Who is going to win this years 'Snake Hips' Title - I think Jason Donovan may just be in the lead on what we have been shown at the moment. I think Harry & Aliona, together with Artem & Holly will have the greatest expectations on them this series so, I'm hoping to see a slightly different approach to choreography this year from Aliona & it looks as if she has listened to some of her critics. There seems to be a good amount of basic steps coupled with some intricate trick steps - Great! Let's see what they've got then... So exciting!
Alex Jones and James Jordan
Hmmm, there's not a lot to go on from this training clip is there really? This slightly concerns me as it could mean that either they haven't had a lot of time to rehearse or that there really isn't anything that good to show or that we're in for a shock and they will be fabulous. I have my reservations that it will be the last option I am sad to say as, I was really hoping that James would have a celeb this year that he could win with. Alex has it all, good looks, great body & a lovely appeal about her but unfortunately from the little (and I can't stress enough... little) footage we have seen, she doesn't seem to have a very natural dance ability or gracefulness & even in comparison with some of the other older ladies, I would expect her to have a little more ability. This seems rather harsh but, if Alex wants to stay in this competition and improve & do well, she will have to become a lot more serious about this and listen to every word James has to say. James is a hard taskmaster but, if Alex wants to do well, improve and become a dancer, she will accept his way of training & working because it does produce good results. You never know, there have been a few really bad dancers in the beginning who have gone on to be really good in the end and I hope Alex has that ability in her to do the same.
Holly Valance & Artem Chigvintsev
As I and I’m sure everyone else expected, Holly looks rather good in their training video. Out of all the ladies this year, I feel that Holly & Chelsee are so far the stand out ladies BUT it is earlier days, the competition hasn’t really begun yet and we still want to see improvement and that awful ‘J’ word (journey for those who are unfamiliar) will count for a lot.
Holly has great use and understanding of her arms and their placement as well as a very good co ordination between her body, hips and leg movement. She has nice, neat feet and a good use of her ankles, which should hopefully stop her from looking flatfooted at times. I think Holly will be more like a fiery, exotic and slightly ‘wild’ (in a good way) character on the floor rather than a demure dancer which for me is a good asset as her dancing won’t look too precise or contrived which can look a little boring at times. She has the wonderful natural antipodean qualities of being feisty, direct, strong & competitive from what I have seen & I look forward to seeing how far Artem can push her and what Holly will be able to produce I just hope that the expectation on her won’t be too much too soon.
I doubt very much that we will get to see Russell Grant and Flavia or Audley Harrison & Natalie which is a shame as I was really looking forward to blogging about these two, especially Russell who has been very prolific on Twitter so, I was very eager to see what their training footage would be like. However, if I don’t update my blog later today with some last minute footage from the BBC, I shall definitely be blogging a whole lot this weekend!
How very exciting – only 1 day to go now and all is revealed! Good luck to everyone and I wish you all a very happy, exciting and successful series!
