Amanda Abbington and Strictly.

Can’t get over her back.

There's a Strictly videos thread? 😱❤️

I'm a huge SCD fan, Amanda is getting all of my votes this year.

Yep, I've lost count of the number of celebs who've gone out the week they had to do the rumba, so I was a bit worried for Amanda that she was doing it this week. Fortunately she negotiated it well, so hopefully will be safe from the dance off this week.

Amanda is getting votes from our household, as she is a fabulous dancer.

Rumba is a hard dance to score well on. I thought she did a good job. DC does Latin and ballroom dancing it has taken a long time to live the rumba. They regularly just practice rumba walks in lessons.

I watched a video on the Strictly videos thread - a masterclass given by a rumba champion. IIRC it took ten minutes or more for her to demonstrate the rumba walk. Looks easy but as others have said, it’s so slow you can see every move, mistakes are magnified.

It’s probably the only dance for which my years of ballet would be an advantage, it’s all about the lovely arms and feet. Amanda got VERY high scores in a traditionally VERY low-scoring dance on Strictly.

'Similarly, I was a teensy bit disappointed with Amanda last night'

Same. She has the most beautiful arms, and the splits were amazing, but I thought her hip action could have been better

As far as whether a dance is “easy” or not it comes down to a combination of things - the main ballroom/latin dances have a fixed syllabus of techniques that you have to follow and that is where you will hear the judges talking about things like foot positions, arm placements, etc being correct (or not), for other dances like Charleston, salsa, etc there is a much more fluid interpretation and whilst there’s a basic technique it is nowhere near as strict. Couples Choice is pretty much “anything goes” so it all comes down to how you sell it!

Rumba is NOT an easy dance! You could say it is marginally easier for the female celebs as they have more to do (the female partner - or “follower” if it’s a same sex couple) is the focus of this dance, the male (or leader) is there to show her off. But it is so slow! There is no room to hide if your technique or timing is poor - in a cha cha cha or a samba you can get away with wriggling your arse a bit to try and cover things up, but here it is all out on show. There’s a reason why so many celebs hate it!

Danced well, the rumba is a beautiful dance to watch. Danced badly, it is a horror show!

Amanda's rumba was amazing!

It will be interesting to see how Krishnan gets on with the other dances, Good, especially the samba which has been the death of a lot of celebs’ strictly ‘journey’. He’s very likeable so he’ll win a lot of support, more than the ex trained dancers. I thought they did a really good job of giving him music, theme, costume, and choreography that gave him his best chance of success yesterday. He did really well, I thought.

I like your analysis of how Krishnan managed to do well last night, @LoobiJee , and how badly it might have gone if he had been doing the rumba.
I was so pleased that it went well for him as I was yearning to vote for him, and couldn't last week as he just looked out of his depth.
THere was me thinking he had improved massively, but it makes sense to see it as just an easy dance, where is sweet personality could triumph over lack of technique.
Similarly, I was a teensy bit disappointed with Amanda last night (but voted for her anyway), but if the rumba is a difficult dance then I guess that was just because she had to concentrate so hard on technique that she had less brainspace left for actory style and charisma.

Thanks for that, @LoobiJee! I know nothing about dancing so go very largely on whether I enjoy the performance, and so far I've been impressed with Amanda every week. She moves beautifully, which I assume is down to her childhood ballet training and years of acting.

Though had seen last week TRAs complaining that Amanda and partenr where clearly getting preferrential treatment as they were to dance the rumba "which everyone knows is an easy dance".

Perhaps they were confusing “slow” with “easy”. The rumba is a dance where you can’t rely on carrying the audience along with you based on the fun and joy of it, like you can with Charleston, jive, quickstep or couples choice. You have to have excellent technique, like Amanda, to make it look good. For example Krishnan, who’s not a dancer, was able to do really well in the Charleston last night because of his personality and performance skills, and it’s not a ballroom or latin dance, so there’s not the same focus on technique, other than Craig wanting to see swivel. If he’d been doing the rumba he’d have looked like a pudding, Lauren would have distracted attention away from him by dancing around him in a fabulous frock, and Shirley would have said ‘Not your dance, but I liked the way you looked after your partner’.

Didn't watch it all tonight, but it seemed everyone was getting quite high marks. Clearly I have no idea what makes someone a good or bad dancer.

Not falling over seems quite an achievement in my opinion!

Though had seen last week TRAs complaining that Amanda and partenr where clearly getting preferrential treatment as they were to dance the rumba "which everyone knows is an easy dance".

But then the Judges said how difficult it was to do.

Not sure I am every going to understand this dancing thing!

Completely agree

It's all part of the panto esque quality.

I think that's it. As a newbie, I thought it was all a bit panto, so he seemed really over the top hostile and strict.

Also I hope the audience doesn't always do what it's told.

That would make it too contrived.

Craig is great. I honestly think if you've only watched a couple of times you've got the wrong end of the stick. His comments are always fair and consistent IMHO. The audience are told to boo him in the warm up. It's all part of the panto esque quality. If you want real cruelty Bruno used to be viscious, but did it in a silly way so got away with it. I'd be judged by Craig over the others any day of the week. (Slightly over invested Strictly fan reporting for duty...)

Agreed! I also have a huge admiration for someone who has a thick enough skin to stick to his line in spite of the booing. Far easier to do what the other three judges do.

Gotta say a 10 from Craig must be the holy grail for any Strictly contestant. Other judges chuck their 10s around so often it’s meaningless. One series Craig gave no 10s at all!

He talked about 'head-burying lifts' and then said, 'it's all up in your face,' to which Giovanni and Amanda clarified, 'the dress!'. It seems clear that they all felt he was referring to the man's face being buried.
To my ear he was trying to word it politely and got a bit tangled up (hence their giggling); and what he'd been trying to express, if you recall the whole comment, was that it's brave to do those kinds of lifts because there's a point in them at which both dancers are 'blind'.

Strikes me that you're speaking in quite harsh terms about this incident and about CRH himself. It seemed to me mildly funny, mildly rude, nothing more.

And it wasn't about the partner's 'male bits', it was about her crotch being in his face; a 'head-burying lift' was what he called it, not a term I'd heard before

Funny as I heard it and understood it to be the reverse, ie her head being buried. Hence my comment.

But just in terms of the show and the time it is broadcast, his even referring to the manoeuvre in such a crude way, rather than complimenting the duo for having managed in the second show to have achieved this.

He is pathetically juvenile and pretentious. (Saying this as someone who have probably only seen he 3 or 4 times in total!)

I didn't think it was a 'crude comment'. I think he just started saying it in good faith/innocence and then didn't know how to get himself out of it!
And it wasn't about the partner's 'male bits', it was about her crotch being in his face; a 'head-burying lift' was what he called it, not a term I'd heard before

TBF they say things like 'entertaining' to people who clearly have no aptitude or hope. Nigel H has potential (has done musical theatre professionally, in fact) and so they're justifiably frustrated with him for not nailing footwork etc that they know he can.

Too tell you the truth I am not too invested in the whole strictly thing, but Craig whoever he was, in that it was the first week, just lept in with some over the top remarks. And even as a newbie, it struck a false note. And really contrasted with his smarmily ingratiating comments this week. although he had to add a crude comment about AA being upside down and her face level with her male partners male bits!

Thanks for comments re how to vote, as I said I have worked that out, but just didn't understand how these votes then weren't refered to. ie they didn't even list, without the numbers, who was top of the public vote. Very weird.