My thoughts on Strictly 2022 + Ellie's Waltz - Dance Saturday
Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,
Recently, me, my mum, and my sister Alice have all been sitting down every Saturday night to watch the latest episodes of Strictly Come Dancing 2022. It has been a long-standing tradition of ours since me and Alice were very young, to watch a bit of Strictly and for many years it has brought us a lot of joy to watch our favourite celebrities transform themselves from complete novices to experienced dancers. However, more recently, I guess we haven't been enjoying the series as much as we used to. It feels a bit of a shame for me to say this because I know how much Strictly Come Dancing has provided a platform for Ballroom and Latin dancing to become more widely recognised by the general public and I do believe that it is actually because of the show that these dance styles have become less associated with the older generation and now highly loved by the youth. This was a subject that I actually explored in more detail in my IB dance extended essay and you can read that post here to find out more. But what made Strictly Come Dancing for me was the authenticity, the unpretentious atmosphere, and the entertainment factor that came from the dancers, presenters, and judges. Now, Strictly has become a place for BBC producers to tick boxes on a piece of paper and purposefully up the diversity factor for the sake of making "marginalised" groups feel more included. When it becomes less about the dancing and more about who is dancing, you begin to question if the BBC is starting to toe the line of political correctness.
It started off in 2020, when professional boxer, Nicola Adams, was coupled with her professional dancing partner, Katya Jones, and the duo became the first same-sex couple of the entire series to compete on the show. As much as I had respect for Nicola Adams and her endeavours to prove to others that women could succeed in boxing, I was a little disappointed by the BBC and their attempts to focus more on appearing to be equal and inclusive, rather than appreciating Ballroom and Latin dancing as a highly skilled art form. Needless to say, I found the pairing between Nicola and Katya to be odd. There was very little chemistry between the two of them and the pair quite often found themselves in the dance-off because they weren't exactly welcomed by members of the public either.
In the 2021 series of Strictly Come Dancing, the producers decided to include another same-sex couple for that year but this time the pairing was done between two male dancers: bake-off winner, John Whaite and professional dancer, Johannes Radebe. As well as including a same-sex couple, they also included a celebrity contestant with a disability when they paired the deaf EastEnders actress, Rose Ayling-Ellis, with her professional partner, Giovanni Pernice. These pairings, I must admit, broke boundaries and they were successful but I think that they were successful because they were sincere. As both John and Johannes were proudly and openly gay men, it wasn't such a struggle for them to be passionate, to be intense, and to be intimate with one another on stage because they both felt comfortable doing so. This wasn't necessarily the case for Nicola and Katya, as it was only Nicola who was openly lesbian and therefore, the chemistry was just not there. I also think that Johannes saw his partnership with John as an opportunity to experiment with the choreography and in the end, he was able to procure some pretty phenomenal routines. My favourite is linked below. I wasn't getting that same connection with the routines when it came to Katya's choreography. With regards to Rose and Giovanni, I think that Giovanni was such an excellent teacher that he really rose to the challenge of trying to adapt what he did to make the routines easier to learn for Rose and I think she really did appreciate his gesture. In the end, this read a lot on stage and you could feel their connection in every performance that they did. In the end, these two couples made it to the final of Strictly Come Dancing and I couldn't have been more proud. Usually, the people who win the show, are not necessarily the best dancers but in this instance, both of them deserved to win. It was a final to remember but granted, this is usually a rarity.
In 2022, the show had 2 same-sex couples competing and another disabled dancer. The 2 same-sex couples were Jayde Adams and Karen Hauer, as well as Richie Anderson and Giovanni Pernice. The disabled dancer was the paralympian Ellie Simmonds and she is dancing with Nikita Kuzmin. I did not see much of a connection between the dancers in the same-sex couples and at the moment, the series is reminding me a lot of 2020. Giovanni is also a naturally masculine dancer and to pair him with a man who is openly gay and naturally eccentric, makes the duo seem quite odd. I think that the BBC was just trying to show its audience that strong masculine men like Giovanni, could dance in same-sex couples but to be honest, you could tell Giovanni was quite uncomfortable with this and as a result, I was struggling to see the connection between him and Richie. Anyway, this couple got voted out of the show quite quickly, which said a lot about what the public thought of all of this. Ellie Simmonds on the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised by. When they announced last week that she would be dancing the Waltz with her much taller partner, Nikita, I wasn't quite sure how that would work. The Waltz requires good framing and for the two dancers in the pair to remain connected and these are things that are achieved when the two dancers are of a similar height. However, Nikita was quite clever in his choreography and he adapted the framing so that it was more accessible to Ellie. Despite the changes, the performance felt like you were watching an elegant and authentic Waltz and nothing felt out of place. Ellie did show the world that anyone can do it if they put their mind to it, and it was a beautiful performance.
Nevertheless, each time I have watched Strictly Come Dancing recently, I have begun to question what the true motives of the BBC really are. Are they truly here to provide a platform of representation for certain groups of people, or are they just appealing to some sort of political agenda and making sure that those essential diversity boxes are being ticked along the way? Because if it's the latter of the two, the ethos of the entire show is always going to be inauthentic because it just proves to the general public that the BBC doesn't truly care about making people feel included, the channel just wants to appear to be doing the right thing, rather than be the ones that actually take the time and energy out trying to do what is right for people. A few years ago now, I watched the paralympian Jonnie Peacock and his professional partner Oti Mabuse, perform a jive on the Strictly stage. Throughout the entire performance, I could not believe that this man had a prosthetic leg because he danced with so much energy and musicality, it was like watching an able-bodied dancer. In the year that followed on from that series, the producers didn't try to include another disabled dancer in their cast, just because they had started that trend the year before. But now it's as if the show has to have a quota of same-sex couples, disabled dancers, and ethnic minority celebrities. Fair enough if that's what came naturally and organically of the show, but the fact of the matter is, the BBC is forcefully adding more of these groups of dancers into their cast and I have the feeling there has to be these groups of people included in every series that they now do. Last year, Strictly Come Dancing was very lucky. They had two openly gay men performing together who had a lot of chemistry and a deaf celebrity contestant who stole the hearts of many with her professional partner. But the recent opening show of this new series of Strictly Come Dancing, lost almost 1 million viewers in total. As much as I love Ellie Simmonds and her partner Nikita, I can tell the show now prioritises political correctness over the authenticity that made the show what it was in the past. And I think that's why so many chose to tune out in the end.
What do you think of the new series of Strictly Come Dancing? Let me know in the comments below and I'll be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you!
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