Dancing with the Stars: Communicating and Connecting with the Audience
Dancing with the Stars: Communicating and Connecting with the Audience by Roxanne McDonald
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Audience appeal is as important as the judges’ scores on this season’s Dancing with the Stars. |
Ask Jerry Springer what works for ratings and he will be able to tell you that it isn’t always all technique that counts. As we all were so moved by last week (week 4), his learning the waltz for his daughter’s forthcoming wedding and his dedicating the less than perfect but purely sentimental moves kept him in the running, just as this week’s entertaining campy performance made him a fan and judge favorite.
Likely knowing he couldn’t recapture the evocative tone of the crowd-pleasing waltz, Springer approaches the Samba with a silly, jiggly, mock performance that with his overblown facial expressions and drumming on the tail feathers of his partner makes the crowd laugh and chant that well-known “Jer-ry! Jer-ry!”
And the judges are equally delighted. Carrie Ann Inaba tells Jerry Springer and partner Kim Johnson that last week they had her crying and this week they have her laughing. And Len Goodman expresses appreciation for Jerry’s age and what his body must be going through, confessing that Jerry Springer is the one celebrity dancer he looks forward to more than any other. Jerry is lucky to have a sexy youtful partner such as Kim Johnson! The lovely Kim Johnson is keeping Jerry in the running for sure!
The point is, they all agree, that Jerry has a gift for connecting with the audience. They give Springer and his partner, the patient and pandering Kim Johnson, 24 points.
The other remaining celebs are aiming at improving as well as at communicating with their partners, themselves, and their audience, too. Joey Lawrence is perfecting movements, which although we are not sure what’s up with the extremely effeminate hand gestures are graceful, clean, defined and sharp. Though Bruno jokes that his performance is a combination of George Michael and The Village People at a cruise ship show, he and the others note how much Joey has improved and how his lines are indeed “pristine” and well-executed—giving Lawrence and his partner Edyta Sliwinska 25 points.
Willa Ford is beautiful during her rendition of the Rumba. She makes extreme moves at times and her face is occasionally a bit giddy, but the movements in her performance are marked by clean lines, making for, as judge Carrie Ann Inaba remarks, a “sophisticated” performance. The judges agree, though Inaba is the one who reminds Ford that her connection with the audience could be better with some more “light” in her eyes or something. Still, the judges give Willa Ford and Maksim Chmerkovskiy 27 points!
Sarah Evans brings confidence to her performance and delight to the judges—the confidence her partner Tony Dovolani’s goal (having seen her sing with the power he envisioned her having in the dance) for her and delighting the judges her goal. Evans is a little stiff in the Samba, but her whole countenance is adorable and thereby endearing to that all-important audience. The judges have awarded Sarah Evans and her partner 24 points, tying her team with audience-loved Springer and his partner.
Mario Lopez and Karina Smirnoff are giving the audience a double delight: they are shown taking a much-deserved day off, swimming at a friend’s pool and lounging and kissing at poolside before the show.
Having practiced for hours, however, the two bring to the floor an equally flirty and kissy Rumba, which shows great romantic connection between the two—which the judges note is necessary to such a sexy dance—and making for equally fine connection with the viewers. It’s almost unfair that Lopez is so damned good looking and good at dancing, too; but given how hard he and his mate work, they deserve the accolades (which include such adjectives as “intense” and “throbbing” and “sexy”) and the 27 points he and Karina get from the judges.
Monique Coleman is getting a most impressive style of coaching and training from her professional dance partner Louis Van Amstel. He is giving her a holistic, soulful education that is helping her to connect within and thereby connect without. The lessons are as abstract as my last sentence was, but they work for Coleman, who holds her arms, Bruno Tonioli comments, like “wings”; who Carrie Ann Inaba describes as having a sensuous and earthy quality; and who Len Goodman decides is “courageous and contagious….” The results are 27 points, aligning her with three other dance teams.
And Emmitt Smith does a Samba that opens him up for “most-improved” and to this writer most appealing performer of week 5. After some occasional reticence in practice with his partner Cheryl Burke, and after some brutal-sounding chiropractic crunching and re-alignment, Smith does indeed “bring it”, as Cheryl hopes. He moves all the parts of his body (whereas many of the former sports figures turned dancers for a season stay stiff in places); he shimmies and shakes through the Samba so delightfully well that Len Goodman calls his performance the “best Samba of the night.” Smith and Burke also earn 27 points, making for a connection that extends from dancer to dancer and dancers to audience into one that includes a close relationship between the remaining teams: two with 24, one with 25, and four with 27 points the callers have to distinguish for us.
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