I really don’t like how quickly this year’s competition is going, can you believe it’s the quarter final next week?! There’s only winners left and the first former champions left the show last night. I’m going to go straight in and say how disappointed I am that Suzanne and Matt are no longer in the running to win because they’re one of my favourite winners and I would have loved to see them in the final alongside Hayley and Ray. Their routine to Black Velvet last night was really amazing, by far their best yet. There was just so much passion and emotion put into the routine and you could really tell how much they’d worked on it, and that was all worth it when they finally got their 10 from Karen, earning them their best score of the series. They most certainly went out on a real high and I’m sure they really enjoyed their night. It was sad to think that was Matt’s last night on the show too (though I’m sure he’ll be back for pro numbers, but you know what I mean) but he’s been there since the very first series, and it’s been a huge 9 year chunk of his life.
They ended up in the skate off against Kyran and Nina and unfortunately there was a few mistakes meaning they lost the judge’s vote. However it has to be noted that Suzanne was the first and only female celebrity to land a headbanger properly and also did the twisting headbanger which looks fantastic, it just unfortunately didn’t go quite right in the skate off and missed her footing. It could be argued that Kyran had a ‘safer’ skate and there was less that could’ve gone wrong possibly. If she’d have landed the headbanger it was almost certain that Suzanne would go through. The pair were on This Morning today talking about their exit from the show and also announced they’re going on tour which as you can imagine I’m very happy about. So anyway now that they’re gone, I’ll be backing Hayley and Dan 100%.
Onto a brief overview of the other routines… Beth seemed to up her performance a lot this week and I think that had a lot to do with the upbeat music they were given that definitely helped, but up against the others she’s still a bit behind, and she’s up against a few actors.
Ray and Maria’s routine was absolutely beautiful, it was to Lego House and I think it was one they choreographed themselves for a previous show and so they were really happy to get to perform it and I’m sure they were delighted with the response. It reduced Karen to tears (which isn’t too difficult, but still) it was a beautiful routine, so expressive. It fully deserved the perfect score it received.
Hayley and Dan’s was also incredibly emotive and beautifully performed as always. They have the perfect friendship for this and I think it does help the longer you’ve known your partner and the closer you are with them. I will never not look forward to seeing them skate.
Sam really couldn’t go wrong with impressing the judges with his energy and how much he was enjoying himself last night with his routine to ‘Happy’. Respectable scores as usual.
And finally I think that Kyran’s routine was a little uninteresting compared to some of the others. I think that he has tried to up his game and he definitely had a few more flips and tricks in there but there were a few wobbles and mistakes in there too which won’t be good enough to be champion of champions. I think he was lucky in the skate off that he managed to pick himself up from the first performance and deliver.
After the individual skates we had the team challenge. The girls were up first to ‘Walk Like An Egyptian’ which I loved, it was fun and the costumes were great, I’m not sure why Dan gets all the crop tops to wear that’s at least his third I’m sure… I thought the choreography was performed very precisely and in my eyes they were the winners.
But then came the boys and impressed the judges with the more fun routine which seemed more laid back than the girls precision and they did a great job in executing it. The judges loved it anyway and ultimately that was who they had to impress, and so the three guys got their scores doubled so that the score board got all shuffled up.
This week’s post isn’t so detailed because I didn’t sit and analyse each routine like I normally do, in fact I didn’t even get to see the show live last night because I was doing a ballet show (more on that to come).