judemorrigan

The thing is, if one wants to make a career out of one of the international styles, one pretty much has to start dancing as a child. And by that, I mean that one had best already have years of experience in by the time one hits 14. There are exceptions, but they're rare. As such, there are 14 year olds who are way past the point of worrying about steps. Now, one might argue that these dancers tend to be in amateur rather than pro-am partnerships. And that is true for the very best of them. But junior pro-am is a thing, and almost exclusively populated with female students and male pros. (Boys who are willing to seriously pursue dance are a difficult to find.)

The various places I've worked have had established policies for donating leave. It's more typically done for things like a coworker who is out of leave having a death in the family, but it seemed entirely believable to me.

I have not fallen in love with a sitcom this hard since Don't Trust the B. Clearly, I need to stop falling in love with sitcoms.

Gotcha. Sorry for misreading you!

If you mean tonight, Val didn't forget his choreography - he had a wardrobe malfunction. His shoes literally stuck together. The standard advice is to rub a thin layer of vaseline onto your shoes where the brush together when passing your feet, but he must have decided not to bother. Which *usually* isn't a problem. But what happened tonight is always a possibility with patent leather shoes. Let me add, lest people reasonably conclude that I'm just a complete Val fanboy, that I really kind of hated Janel & company's "salsa". The split-leg lift. Ugh. Also, for the record, I firmly believe that Alfonso *should* win, but kind of expect Bethany's social media presence to be the deciding factor.

Sure, sure. I totally get that. I have no problem admitting that I basically didn't watch her at all in that dance. I didn't particularly feel the lack, but it certainly does kind of defeat the purpose. Random, unrelated observation: I also appreciated Derek's doing a standing spin versus a fleckerl. I have seen entirely too many really poorly executed fleckerls done before, and I don't just mean on the show. Someone who's been dancing as long as the stars on this show have no business even trying to do one.

The mistake really was on Val. I think it's fair to not ding Janel for that. That said, I have to say that I really enjoyed the reminder that Mark isn't just a zany choreographer but a danged spectacular dancer as well.

Regarding Val and Janel and whether or not they spent enough time in frame - watch some pro or championship smooth. You'll have plenty of shadow position or alternative hold (the latter of which Val had in the routine with the open naturals - which is bog standard), but very little closed hold. Of all the pros, I find Val's choreography to be most evocative of current dancesport trends. There was quite a bit in there that was also is my own silver smooth Viennese.

For the record, there was quite a bit of Viennese content in Val's dance. It was just all smooth Viennese.

I guess I'm going to be in a minority of one, but I'm afraid I was quite unimpressed with Keo's dancing. It was enough to get me to go look up his results. I found what I expected to find. Sure, it's a heck of a lot better of a resume than, say, SYTYCD-chick's, but it's not actually that impressive. He's not even close to being in Val's league, let alone Karina's. Still, he seems like a perfectly nice guy and should be more than adequate for this site.