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Professional Dancer’s Role on “Dancing With The Stars”

Nancy Henrichsen asked:


As an avid viewer each week of the wildly popular reality series, “Dancing With The Stars”, no one can overlook the fact that the Professional Dancers outdance their amateur celebrity partners. The fact is that the professional dancers, Cheryl Burke, Tony Dovolani, Julianne Hough, Derek Hough, Mark Ballas, et al, dance professionally because they have accomplished near perfection in the ballroom arena. One doesn’t have to be a professional dancer to realize that they are stunning in their execution of difficult patterns and moves. When professionals dance together as partners, some partnerships are equal where both dancer’s skills are at the same level. Conversely, other partnerships exist where one of the dancer’s skill level exceeds the other which will create a desire from the lesser partner to dance up to meet the better partner’s level.

On “Dancing With The Stars”, the dynamics of the partnership are founded on inequality, thus creating an interesting and TV- worthy competition. Each professional dancer is partnered with an amateur whose dancing abilities vary. It is then up to each professional to bring out the inner dancer in their amateur celebrity partner. What soon becomes obvious as the show progresses is that some of the amateur partners do not possess the ability to dance at a level even remotely resembling what the professionals are capable of. It is the role of the professional partner to make the amateur look as good, strong, cool, connected, polished, etc. as they possibly can.

The goal is to outperform the other couples. This can be accomplished by show-casing the amateur/professional in magnificent costumes, or with a compilation of steps highlighting the amateur’s strengths, or through diversion tactics with the professional dancer taking the heavier load of the actual dancing performed in the routine. Many of the professionals use all three of these tactics. And some professionals receive a bit of heat from fans and critics when they do. Edyta Sliwinska’s glamorous but skimpy costumes are the source of much conversation about the show; she has a perfect dancer’s body, and her costumes accentuate her superb dancing. Would anyone want to watch if she were underachieving or not trying to give her partner the best chance at staying around another week? Julianne Hough always looks adorable, so why, according to recent news postings, did her black lace rumba costume have just “too much lace”?

Using all the tools available, it is the responsibility of the professional dancer to make their amateur partner look GOOD, whatever it takes, excluding an occasional wardrobe malfunction. How about a round of applause for both the amateurs and the professionals for the major weekly accomplishment of facing three hard-core judges and the American public? If the couple makes it another week, it probably means the professional did his/her job.



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