DWTS, weeks one and two

I missed the first episode of Dancing With The Stars due to a freak occurance on my VCR. I'm not sure what happened, but I ended up with two hours of CourtTV! Anyway, my first exposure was the Friday results show on the 6th, so it was difficult to get a feel for the dancers. I did get to see the current US champions dance to music by Burt Bacharach; unfortunately I can't remember their names, but seeing as their dance was pretty forgettable, that's not so surprising. It seemed like they were good dancers, but they didn't do much actual dancing. It was like watching a ballet piece composed mostly of chassés and arm waving. I also didn't like the way the woman's line broke at the wrist.

Last week I saw the Thursday show but not the results show, again due to trouble with my VCR. (Tivo is looking better all the time.) Stacy Keibler stood out for her Rumba; some of the other women were pretty good but didn't have the lines she did. From her bio it appears that she had a fair amount of dance training when she was young. You can see it in her upper body, that is if you can tear your eyes away from her long legs! This time around I actually recognized some basic steps in the Rumba. I do wonder if the dancers were told to stick closer to basics than the last group did, because this seemed to be true of even the pros who were in the competition for the second time. Speaking of which, it's been really nice to see more of Edyta this time around. She's really a good dancer, quite the opposite of Tatum O'Neil, who got voted off the show last week. Her Rumba was painful to watch - it was almost completely graceless.

The men were pretty good doing the Quickstep. P. Miller wants to keep his rapper look while dancing, and it just doesn't work for him. If he would put on a tux and dance shoes, his score would probably go up 5 points. That's an intruiguing idea, though, mixing ballroom and hip hop. I think it would actually work best in the Quickstep and possibly the Cha Cha. When Mr. Silvershoes and I took the hip hop class, the instructor gave us a brief demonstration of swing dance executed with hip hop style. It was amazing.