Apolo Anton Ohno and his pro partner Julianne Hough dance the quickstep in the DWTS semi-finals. She is only 18 and is the only American to have been a Champion at Blackpool. That is the dance equivalent of Apolo's Olympic gold medals.
His dancing has improved exponentially during the season, and they are wonderful in this routine. If he had a few months more, you'd see his top line become more stretched out, less of his chin out, but he's amazing for someone who just started dancing a few months ago! All the competitors in the semi-finals danced well, even the obnoxious ones.
Here, for comparison, is video of quickstep solos with judge commentary at the World DanceSport Championships. You can see that the dance requires incredible speed and absolutely sudden stops, total control of the feet but freedom and flow in the top. The second couple is AMAZING!
And here's the incredibly hot cha cha from Apolo and Julianne. The judge who says it;s too raunchy is actually the only real ballroom judge of the three, and he knows that Latin routines are always sexy, but some folks in the ballroom world don't like the tendency to emphasize speed over technique. It think he wasn't just complaining about the raunch of the dancing (really, the song), but the fact that she has cleverly choreographed the routine to showcase what he does best (speed, precision, exuberance, hotttness) and down-played the fact that he does not yet know how to do the Latin motion in the cha cha basics--he does good hip action in a lot of movements, but there's not actually a lot of cha-cha in this dance. Often the judges are telling the pros what they want to see in the choreography or teaching when they make their remarks. But who cares? the crowd thinks they're great!
For comparison, here's my favorite amateur couple, Eugene and Maria (I've seen them dance a few times at the USABDA finals) doing rumba and a little cha cha. Every movement is totally connected, even in the transitions from inhumanly fast to immobile, and they each show the way that Latin motion involves a complete movement through the whole body as the weight changes, not just a shift from foot to foot. I wish I could find a clip with a clearer quality.
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Do you ever watch Malcolm in the Middle? I never do because I am always with the sweetie, and if the actual sitcom is not bad, the commericials are, stuff she does not need to see. Anyway, yesterday I was making the bed and the DH left the t.v. on and Malcolm in the Middle was on. The mother had signed up for dance lessons, ballroom. The husband was finally invited to play poker with this group that never invited him before so she let him off the hook, but made her son go, who started exploiting money out of seniors because they wanted to dance with him (teenager) instead of the old men. Anyway, she would dance with the instructor and would come home on fire, she was smoking, light feet and every thing. Wild. Then the instructor gave her a card to another studio and told her that she had out grown him, that she was too much, too advanced for his school. She was on fire, going all the way. When she got home and was telling her husband about how the teacher wants her to go somewhere she watched the video that another one of her sons had taped in order to black mail his brother dancing with the old ladies, and she saw how horrible she was. She was stepping on the teacher's feet, knocking into people, knocking over stuff. LMAO!
Now I will watch your clips.
I don't watch that show, but my daughter does sometimes. The dance studios will do anything to make you feel great and happy, no matter how bad you are because they need to keep you coming back and spending money. Actually some of the best dancers are the old men! It's so funny, when I asked men why they had started taking ballroom dancing, they often said they were getting a divorce and wanted to meet people. Then, they fell in love with dancing. The Japanese movie Shall We Dance is a great version of that.
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