Strictly Review: Jaime Laing & Karen Hauer

After much anticipation Strictly Come Dancing is finally back for the 2020 series and we’ve just had our first Charleston of the year in Movie Week. TV personality Jaime Laing and his dance partner Karen Hauer performed a Charleston too ‘Zero to Hero’ from Disney’s animated classic Hercules.

Jamie dressed as Hercules/ He-Man and Karen as his muse, they performed a highly entertaining number which had the judges in stitches and gained him high scores, but technically was it that good?

If we pick part the routine the classic Charleston moves include Swivel Walks (0:25) and only one basic 20s Charleston at 0:35. From there the sequence blends into a 30s Charleston followed by kicks (where Jamie is on the wrong leg) followed by heel flicks. Craig said he needed to work on that section, which I agree didn’t look very sharp. 

The second interesting Charleston sequence is the side to side Charleston in hold followed by Bunny Hops at 0:57. These are the only steps performed in hold in the whole routine.

The final section included Suzy Qs, 30s Charleston and helicopters which finished in a lift… where Jamie accidentally drops Karen on the floor!

Technically Jamie is not very strong in this routine and the theme is quite strange for a Charleston but he makes it look very fun, which is one of the main principales of the genre.

The choreographer is Tommy Franzen who also choreographed the Simpsons Street/Commerical routine on the night. I would highly recommend checking out his Instagram to see how he devised the piece and how he envisioned it would look.

Overall, this wasn’t my favourite Charleston number as it was quite messy and I thought there are some great movies they could have picked to really compliment the Charleston. Fingers crossed for a more dyanmic number next week!

Scores:

Craig - 7

Shirley - 8

Motisi - 8

MyCharleston - 6