SCD '24 #4: The first live show, all 2.5 hours of it! (SPOILER FREE)

[PolkadotsAndMoonbeams]

Bums numb yet folks? I'm enjoying it though.

[

Spoiler thread if you like to indulge.

Toyah's hair is bigger than her. I've been trying to work out if it's product in her real hair or Tina Turner style wigs.

Paul to go.

I think that one was a wig.

Don't you need to change your username this year nige? I miss Nigel!

First timer on this thread but had to say I think Nick is over egging the arm somewhat. He knows he'll be out in the early rounds so every extra week counts.
The footballer to go.
Toyah next unless she performs a miracle. Closely followed by NK.
Punam was undermarked. I think the public will get that.
Chris has dragged me back to Strictly. Wonderful. That jump onto the bench!
I like Wynn too.

I voted for Sam , Pete and Punam.
Wynns dance was my favourite though.
I felt sorry for Toyah, I know she is not very good. but to be below someone who just walked about must be hard.

I thought that was a great show. I like all the celebs (or at least don’t dislike any of them, some I forget are there at this stage). I voted 2x Punam, 1x Chris.

I'm surprised at people thinking Punam will go, I thought she was undermarked. Chris is so unexpectedly brilliant (I read an interview where he said he can see 'a load of blurry lights').

I thought the weakest were Tom (I found him uncomfortable to watch), Toyah and Sam. It was a difficult dance for Sam. Obviously Nick and Paul were what you’d expect but one was injured and one was Paul.

Montel, Sarah, JB and Shayne were really good. Shayne should stop reading SM and focus on the dance. I think that is also what Anton's word salad was intended to mean!

I’m sure Tasha is good but I found it a bit bland and then went and re-watched Danny and Oti and…. yeh they really should not have reused that music. I think I probably find Aljaz a bit bland in general, I don’t remember any of his dances.

I still like Pete Wicks and I think he’s got potential if he lasts long enough, and he has Jowita so he may well do.

I’m weirded out by the way that Craig is assessing Chris. There’s too little acknowledgement of the fact that Chris is actually blind, which has to be by miles the most impactful disability that’s been on strictly yet. He is turning out an extremely respectable performance, way, way better than the likes of toyah and Paul, but gets less credit.
the show seems to make more of nick’s arm injury or Shayne’s online trolling than being blind. I don’t expect it to be made all about Chris. I appreciate he still should be expected to conform to the expectations of the dance but he is doing that and not getting the credit which I think he would do if he was sighted. Paul got praise from Craig for those lifts when they weren’t that great and the rest of the dance was an absolute shambles. I think it’s not right to ignore the elephant in the room like Craig is doing and being unnecessarily harsh. particularly on the first week I thought Craig was actually discriminatory to ignore the disability. He was so harsh it made me feel a little bit sick.

I don't like the way that the judges are arguing in this series, it's not light-hearted and it's not a good discussion.
Craig seems particularly negative.

At a guess I think Chris would be worse if he was completely deaf rather than blind.
What with having no dance/ drama background at all.

I went to the daily fail link about the SM stuff about Shayne and was quite surprised. From the "Poor you, what a difficult week you've had." stuff from some of the judges I was expecting seriously nasty stuff. He loves himself, if he was made of chocolate he'd lick himself, he gives me the ick ... Not particularly nice but hardly devastating. If it didn't get worse than that then judges being poor you and he himself need to ignore it and move on.

If there was a lot worse than that then fair enough but SM can be both lovely and the devil's arsehole of vile stenching hideousness and unless it includes threats of violence, doxing and that level of criminal or verging on criminal shit you have to move on.

Unless it is as bad as the second paragraph then making as much of it as was done last night will do him no favours at all. I'm wondering if it's because of the vile shit Amanda A got last year and this year and them wanting to be seen as more caring this year? If so they're getting it very wrong.

I don't think Craig is being discriminatory. He would have been way more harsh if Chris wasn't blind. He isn't being patronising (neither are the others) which would be far worse. I think Chris is being treated fairly and I imagine there were discussions beforehand as to how they wanted to do this.

There is no elephant in the room. Everyone knows Chris is blind - it's obvious! Chris makes jokes about it to the judges and everyone else.

It was bugging me who Toyah reminded me of and it came to me in the middle of the night..

I guess if you see strictly as a workplace and the judges as managers doing a performance review, i think an employee would certainly be able to make a claim of disability discrimination due to Craig not making reasonable adjustments to account for his disability when evaluating the performance.
after all, this is a workplace and it is literally a performance review!

Neil.needs to be benched next year for making us watch that hideous rodeo choreo.
Also would have preferred Luba or Nadiya to be benched and have Lauren with Tom or Nick.

Chris cannot look in a mirror to see what his feet are doing. He needs to be told verbally if he is picking them up too high or whatever. I think Craig was just pointing out some details, like the finger placement. Little adjustments that will push his performance. Like reminding him to use an appropriate facial expression for the dance. Something Diane might have overlooked but is noticeable on TV.

@balletflats I think facial expressions are one of those things the loads of celebs forget in the heat of the moment when they are focused remembering steps etc. particularly if it's not a 'character' dance.

The easiest way to teach someone how to dance is to show them what to do, show them the perfect technique and show them where they are going wrong. All that goes out the window with Chris. He has to have the most challenging disability ever negotiated on Strictly. However, I thought Craig's advice to work on his hands and facial expression was constructive. It's not like when the judges kept on having a go at Jonny Peacock for sticking his bum out when his disability meant he had no option but to stick it out or topple over.

I thought most of what Craig said was fair. I didn't like the smile comment though. People with complete sight loss smile different in a way which people with vision see differently. It lacks the direction and eye contact of 'sighted smiling'. I thought that was an (unintentionally) ableist comment. There is no doubt Chris is enjoying himself .It's obvious in his behaviour , body language and facial expressions. Sorry if Craig doesn't 'see' smiling.

That comment jarred for me too. If you've spent a lifetime not seeing facial cues you may not smile on demand in the 'right' way.

But dancers are told to smile. It's not a personal criticism, just a note. Remember to smile, or in a paso, remember to look fierce.

Yeah. Some of the other celebs were literally grimacing this week, and it’s chris who gets picked up for not smiling.
Chris doesn’t know when anyone else is smiling, he hasn’t seen a facial expression in like 30 years. It seems a very negative focus especially in week two.

I mean they were grimacing when they shouldn’t have been (not in tango/paso)
they are told a lot of things that they then don’t do in the performance because it takes an awful lot to remember everything at once. It’s understandable when they forget these details, especially at the beginning especially when you can’t see your partner’s smile as a reminder. Like I say, plenty of the other contestants didn’t smile much even when they were staring a massive 300kw Cheshire Cat of a partner in the face!

Just from personal experience, disabled people quite often have a very black sense of humour when it comes to their own disabilities. Some people would be mortified to hear the stuff my dad has said over the years about his own sight loss, I see a lot of my dad’s sense of humour in Chris and the way he responds to people’s comments.

People can be unthinking a lot of the time, and I don’t think there’s any malice in it - they just genuinely don’t think “is this appropriate”. For goodness sake my dad’s own sister kept sending him birthday cards for years after he finally lost all of his sight (he was born with poor eye sight and it degenerated over the years so that he was totally blind by about 40). She didn’t mean anything by it, she was just thinking “birthday = send a birthday card”.

When I learned to dance we were always being told off for not smiling and it is one of the hardest things to remember to do and to make look natural. The way to look at it is as a dance move, but on your face. You're not doing it from inner joy or anything.

As a side note, has anyone tried watching Strictly with the AD on yet? Just wondering how they are describing the dances for a VI audience.

Is it generic - “Chris is sitting on a yellow bench, Dianne twirls in holding an umbrella and sits beside him.”

Dance specific - “Tom dances 3 New York’s and into a Spot Turn”

Honest - “Er dear Lord, I have no idea what Paul is doing but he’s stomping around a lot while Karen shakes her hips”

😜

Smiling, and breathing! Always being told to remember to breathe!