With the season return of Dancing With the Stars, each Tuesday Moving in Measure will be recapping the previous night’s episode by highlighting three (or so) dances worth a watch — or rewatch. Allowances are made for a celebrity’s reasonable level of technique; we’re evaluating these things on a sliding scale.
1. Gymnasts are not dancers. This is certainly acknowledged by many a dance fan who complains about the sport’s diminishing artistry, but in the world of Dancing With the Stars, gymnasts, like figure skaters and some entertainers, are classified as “ringers.” But gymnasts — and skaters and boy band members and other supposed shoo-ins — can accompany assets like physical conditioning and flexibility with baggage such as an inattentiveness to rhythm, unfamiliarity with partnering, and ingrained habits that run contrary to proper ballroom and Latin movement.
That stated, 2016 Rio gold and silver medalist Laurie Hernandez entered this DWTS season as a projected favorite to take the Mirrorball Trophy, and a debut cha cha with partner Val Chmerkovskiy did nothing to eradicate those pre-show assumptions:
There’s room to grow technically for sure, but if Val can confidently demand this level of content in Week 1, we can only imagine where she may go by season’s end — provided the whims of a schedule that includes the Kellogg’s Tour of Gymnastic Champions don’t interfere.
2. For IndyCar driver James Hinchcliffe, dancing with Sharna Burgess, the awkward element of the first-time dancer in a first-time lead is real, but he’s capable of movement and seems to grasp the music, as well as appearing at ease as a performer. Latin dances tend to provoke more consternation than standard for male celebrities of this stripe, but with the relative ease of rise and fall demonstrated here — versus a stiffer hesitance sometimes seen from male contestants — he should be able to grasp the general rhythms whether or not the specific Latin hip action is as quick to be developed.
3. It’s a toss-up at the third spot. Derek Hough gave dance-experienced partner Marilu Henner some of the night’s most complete content in a jive; her execution, however, is tough to determine, with the show’s directors opting to focus on upper body and only limited looks at footwork. Better camera angles served Calvin Johnson with Lindsay Arnold in a football-themed cha cha and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds with Allison Holker in a Broadway-fusion foxtrot, but here, too, comes a conundrum. Both men demonstrated a nice sense of rhythm, but Calvin — given quite a bit of floor to cover — does show some of the clumsiness that comes with adjusting long limbs and large feet to fast footwork. Babyface’s execution is smoother and more precise, but the extent of his abilities may need more demanding choreography to be better understood. For now, enjoy both:
Honorable mention to Rob Van Winkle, AKA Vanilla Ice, and partner Witney Carson. While this routine to his “Ice Ice Baby” is light on cha cha, he carried through a decent recognition of rhythm. Sentimentally speaking, the song (and the running man!) are forever intertwined with your reviewer’s childhood memories of weekly jazz dance classes in the early ’90s era:
