Not like a ballerina.

This is not like a ballerina

I don't see many ballerinas with the torso tight, chest closed, hips tight and closed, shoulders nearly hunched, and chin down facing the floor or ice. This is almost freakish.

See the difference?

See the difference?

Forget the toes. And the skating. Look at the torso, the shoulders, the chest, the neck (not snapped back, btw), the pelvis and the hips. Everything's stretched, lifted, open.

See the difference directly below? Straight up and down. The body isn't connected, there's nothing running "through" the body. And look at that dropped elbow.

See the difference?

Let's look back at the top again.

This is not good. It's bad. I imagine Davis White fans have simply been in the habit of getting those two concepts mixed up for a long time.

I'm having issues embedding Meryl and Charlie's dances from last night, so I'll have to troubleshoot that later.

ETA - okay, here we go:



I haven't broken thse down yet, but I bet Charlie wouldn't have dropped the cane if he engaged his upper body fully when he moves. Charlie trends to "quick" but small. He doesn't really articulate his body unless it's where it's been particularly broken down for him and emphasized by his instructor, and then defaults back to small. He might have caught the cane before it flew away if he didn't have that habit. He needs to keep his chest and shoulders open.

But note that at the end, Sharna is able to rotate without Charlie hunkering down and girdling her with his arm, pasting her to his trunk, and pushing her legs straight.

I do think his partner is a class act, that they connect well, and it helps him phrase, cue off her, and lose himself more in the performance. He shouldn't, IMO, start getting fast-but-unfinished when he starts getting into the performance, but that happened less here than in the jive.

And as for Meryl, I thought this was her best performance in terms of moving with some naturalness and relaxation added into her jackhammer movement style, but then again, there wasn't exactly a ton of movement, period. There were glimpses of samba in tiny segments. It was like DW skating programs (and like Maks' choreography, which means he and Meryl are a match made in heaven) - show a minimal amount of the actual dance - dance, hell, minimize steps, period, and vamp with the upper body. Execute super complicated open hold moves like moving side by side across the floor or ice in a stright line facing the same direction and then switch from right to left in an arm's length hand hold. That blew up the scoreboard in Schez, if memory serves.


Gifs after the jump.

I'm going to put them up and comment more later but I think most of the "samba" speaks for itself. If anybody can explain some of the WTF, feel free.

You know what I just now noticed, and realize happened in the AT too - she tries to or actually does hop or jump in direction changes even on the floor. Look at the elementary direction changes in this "samba".  Little hops, up-jerks and jumps all over the place (and I don't mean the samba "bounce", but when she changes direction).

Pirouettes are my favorite part of samba.

I can't remember what part of samba this is but Meryl is killing it.

She's tight with the music all right

I won't be able to gif this until tomorrow, so for now:


Gee, they thought Meryl lost timing a couple of times.

You don't say.

Imagine being an Olympic-gold medal possessing ice dancer on DWTs, getting a dance that goes right to your specialty, which is being tossed, flipped and flung like a sack of laundry while warp-speed flinging out your legs below the knee and your arms from the shoulders out, and the judges can only cough up one extra point from your debut. Meryl is really bad. How can a solid, built-like-a-fireplug, slam-into position, under five feet tall, teen gymnast be a better dancer than a gold-medal draped ice dancer? Shawn Johnson was Yulia Zagoruychenko compared to Meryl. Meryl is terrible!

No rhythm at all, no musicality. Her shoulders, head, back and hips are rigid. She's had two super fast, athletic dances to help her get her feet wet before the slower, dramatic, more controlled, more graceful stuff starts, and she can't pull them off.

She's doing nothing differently in terms of dancing than she did on ice, where judges apparently thought she was so "tight" with that music they wish they had +10's - referencing that section of the guidelines that deals with "tightness" that I can't seem to find anywhere.

This performance has nothing to do with the difficulty of transferring from ice to the floor. She wasn't on the damn floor half the time. This is - she can't dance.

I think the judges are being kind, and were kind last week. They're giving her points for the energy and the fitness. For now they're focusing on her total lack of musicality and her imprecision. Dear God wait til they get to her alignment and her rigidity. Baby steps. Don't want to pile on.

I don't know if I've ever seen an ice dancer with such a stiff, brittle back, who is all knees down, and then arms, no torso, no hips, can't phrase, and has no sense of time. I don't think even Maria Butyrskaya was this tight.



Butyrskaya had better edges too.

Meryl "dances" like one of the exercise obsessives in some high intensity, high impact jazzercise or aerobics class - you could break your face on her muscles, and your jaw drops at the zero body fat, but she has no rhythm whatsoever and walks funny. Little spastic scurrying feet, oblivious to any timing but frantic, is not dancing.

And why not watch Kristy Yamguchi on her first DWTs episode (not a dancer, a singles skater. And a pairs girl), years removed from her competitive prime, and in her thirties:



Okay, waiting for Charlie. And gifs tomorrow.

Here's Charlie

After these, we can get to canadablue's Davis White and Virtue Moir gala comparisons.

I got the chance to watch some of the others, namely, Danica McKellar, Candace Bure and Amy Purdy. All were better than either Davis and White by a fair amount. McKellar's spins were stronger than Meryl's - balanced, controlled, in time with the music. Purdy had the best topline, and, of the three, I think was the most natural dancer - damn her for having Derek (I love Derek but I feel 6 trophies would be some kind of wrong). Bure kicked Charlie's ass in contemporary, but Charlie and Sharna had a prettier and, I guess, more audience-grabbing number, and I think Ballas worked a static frame a little too much - they didn't really use the space.

Let's watch Charlie go:

I thought this was leading to a vampire
interpretation, but false alarm. Look at Charlie act!
Has it been pent up inside him all this time?
He's almost hungry.

Right there he's now looked her in the face more
times than his entire career with Meryl.
 Not even waiting for the part specially
choreographed for him to look her in the face.
Just like it's a regular thing.

Sharna phrases very well and is very musical herself. You can't say that about all the pros. They all dance in proper time, but they don't all phrase well, although I won't start airing out my opinions as to who does and doesn't. But the fact that Sharna acts well when she dances (the music affects her rhythm which feeds the emotion in the narrative) gives Charlie a template right on the floor with him that is giving immediate feedback he can feed off and work with.

On the ice, he has to work with a static partner using what becomes a static template created off ice by his very musical coach (Marina), a template that has "set" the rhythm by timing the choreography to certain beats and musical highlights in their program music. Once they take it out on the ice, he's working by rote.

The other thing that gives you a "Hmm, that's different" feeling watching Charlie work with Sharna is we're used to DW re-setting after everything. Here Sharna's movement and the choreography kept evolving after she exited a lift. She didn't stop to wave her arms around, pose, jump in place, or slide on her knees. She could actually enter a lift, execute the lift, exit the lift, and off the exit transition into another choreographic phrase. We don't see this with DW, and suddenly the familiar DW lifts made sense and came alive as choreographic storytelling aids.

This is the part where Charlie showed tempo
variation in his actual movement. I was stunned.
It also reads to me like: "I can dance!
I can dance! I'm doing it."
There's a "Yeah!" kind of vibe going on,
like something is busting out.
"You didn't think I could!"

Look at Charlie, holding the moment after
the actual dance is done.

Sharna kind of stepped all over Charlie's "beat" by hopping in glee the instant she hit her last mark. Come on Sharna, you're the pro. Let Charlie enjoy himself - he never gets to do this in his day job.

BTW, what happened to Charlie's asthma? You'd think between the stress of doing something new (dancing), the challenge to his equilibrium posed by looking at his partner, and adrenalin, he'd be doubled over a bit, but he seems just fine.

Also:

Long time no see Tanith and Charlie out and about in
public together. Here they are again, just like
an actual couple.