Episode 32 Strictly - It Takes Two

Hello. It's Tuesday. Welcome to It Takes Two. They were bailed out by

the judges. Nicky and Karen are here. They have just about caught

their breath after the speediest quick step Wembley has ever seen,

Dani and Vincent. They stepped up their A game with

their choreography, it's Karen Hardy. Look at him in his shiny

jacket. Hopefully, we'll be talking about ruffles and go-days ago, go.

It's Walter McDonald. What a show. This is Strictly Come Dancing: It

Takes Two. Please welcome your host, Zoe Ball.

APPLAUSE Hello, and welcome to It Takes Two.

Nicky and Karen were given a get- out-of-jail free card at the

weekend when they were saved by the judges. Hooray. I'll be chatting to

them in just a minute, but first, a reminder of their performance.

was a great jive - the style, the energy - straight away, you have

worked hard. I can see that. very flat-footed. I thought.

BOOING It made it appear stompy. There is

not any retraction in any of your flicks. It was quick. It was slick.

The flavour of that wasn't jive. It was rock 'n' roll. That gets a

different leg action. Stylistically it was absolutely wonderful rock

This was the goal - to dance here, and we did, and we got a beautiful

score. We got a six from Craig, but we'll go again next week. If we're

here, we'll go again. Itself. better than a four. It's time to

find out which one of you will be back next week. Judges? Nicky and

Karen. Nicky and Karen. Nicky and Karen. You have been let off for

good behaviour. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Nicky and

Karen. Well done on Saturday night. I watched the show with loads of my

mates. We were all going crackers for you after your performance.

Congratulations on surviving the horrid dance-all. If we ignore that

little bit, how was Saturday night at Wembley for you? I loved it.

Fantastic. To get there was huge. I was looking to play Wembley with

West Life. I knew the atmosphere. What is it like to play there 20

times? Who is counting? It's an amazing place. You have to go out

there and try to entertain. That's what I tried to do. I loved it. It

came off. We felt we gave it a great job. You got three eights

there - Craig and his sixes we'll ignore! Obviously, Richard went

home, and he has been such a wonderful mate to everybody, hasn't

he, and he such a good laugh. Did you get quite emotional? When

you're in the dance-off and I have never been in a situation like that,

and it's horrible. I never want to be in there again, but I got

through. My gut feeling and initial reaction was to get to Richard to

make sure he was OK. It was an interesting situation. There were

three others below you. Were you shocked to be in the bottom two?

could happen. It could happen to any one of us. We thought we had a

brilliant dance,ed a all of a sudden we end up down there. When

you're down there the first thing you have to do is fight for it. We

want to be in the competition. We want to succeed, and we want to

make Craig happy. That's all we want! That's all... You did make

him happy last week, just wasn't happy this week. I want to keep him

happy every week. When he put up the six, I think he had it upside

down. Clearly. You could have gone over and turned it up. You have had

loads of messages. Claire says, "Nicky didn't deserve to be in the

dance-all. He has been consistently improving up like others." Ooh. The

good thing is unanimous decision. You must take comfort from that. At

that point, there is a million emotions running through your mind,

and I just wanted to get the dance- off out of the way. It was like,

let me on the floor. Let me try and do my best again and see where we

go. It's nice to hear comments from Len like rock 'n' roll. Forget

about the straight kicks. It was rock 'n' roll, and you did it very

well - took some heart in that when they all give you the go-ahead, you

feel like I have done something right, so it was nice.

difficult is it to lift spirits and go out and do it again and

effectively dance for your life, Karen, at that point? It's so

difficult because the first time we went out we thought it was a home

run, and the second time you're trying to do the same thing, but

seriously, he surprised me! Because he was just going, and I was like,

all right. I am just going for the ride. Just before the dance-off

happened, out of nowhere Michael Vaughan appeared. Honestly, he just

appeared out of nowhere. Myself and Vaughan get on very well. Bromance.

Definitely. He was dead serious and almost like a captain. He grabbed

ahold of me. He said "You know what you can do. Go and do it. Don't

mess up." It's like Field of Dreams. So if you're watching, thank you

very much. You obviously were channelling Elvis. You danced to

Elvis. You carried this through in the training room last week. We

have some special bits here. you imagine if Elvis was... You are

Elvis! E-l-v-i-s! Did I spell that right? I don't ever recall seeing

Elvis in one of these. Elvis was all about the eyebrow and the head

down. Maybe it's Priscilla. Love me tender

# Love me true # Elvis has left the building. Uh-

huh! Thank you very much. So this week,

onwards we go to the Charleston. Obviously, early days. How is it

going so far? It's OK. Fun. It's the first day, a few hours in. It's

exciting. It's very fun. It's funny, intentionally funny. Intentionally.

But I am sure Craig will give us a four or something. No, it's good.

We're going to work hard. That's all that matters. Is it daunting

following James and Denise last week? They were awesome. They were

so good, but you know what? We're just going to go out and do what we

do. You know, we're in the opposite. We were in the dance off. We don't

want to leave the show. No-one does. When you're down there, you pick up

the pieces and go come on. Let's not give up without a fight.

have a bit of Gatsby about you for the Charleston. Give it up for

Nicky and Karen. Saturday's huge dancefloor left plenty of room for

dance errors. As usual, keeping a close eye on the choreography was

Please welcome our very own dancing Queen, Karen Hardy.

APPLAUSE I love that opening sequence. How

much did you enjoy dancing through the decades at Wembley on Saturday,

Karen? Absolutely amazing, and I think what we probably need to do

is count how many times I am going to say "absolutely" and "amazing"

today. Quite a few. Do we have a little thing that goes ting-ting?

Let's start with Nicky around Karen. Did they deserve to be in the

bottom two in your eyes? No. I got confused about the reference of the

retraction. Craig said there wasn't enough retraction, and Len said

it's more like rock 'n' roll jive. Who was right? It's all relative to

the speed of the music. As soon as it gets over a certain speed, the

retraction is taken away, and physically you flick away and

create the rock 'n' roll effect. I will give it a quick go-to, but

before I do that, I want to say there was so much content in this

choreography. There were walks. There were chicken walks, underarm

turns. It was beautiful jive content, but it had the rock 'n'

roll essence to it, and I would have liked for them to have picked

up more on the content rather than they didn't understand that the

music really was way too fast, and there would have been no

opportunity for a retraction as I'll show you. Oh. I will try. I

will try. I may launch my shoes across the studio. I am excited by

the prospect. Go. The normal idea - let's say a kick, ball change - you

can see my knees are coming up. retraction, yeah. Once it gets

faster, the foot just kicks away. It's a beautiful thing. Can you see

that? That's a beautiful thing. Let's talk about Denise and James

and their charston - was it the best ever Charleston in your eyes

on Strictly? James is going to get me in the corridor because I have

to say yes. Technically, though, she was miles ahead of everybody.

Denise. It looks relatively simple - move the arm, kick the leg in and

out and jump up and down at the same time - nearly impossible, and

it's coming towards the end, and she's got the big lift that was

quite a nerve-racking moment. You would think she'd be absolutely

exhausted. She delivered it with such style and pizazz, I loved it,

absolutely amazing - ding-ding. There we go. Lisa and Robin and

their samba. Such an opening to the show. She gave such an incredible

performance. Len said she needs to polish her technique. Yeah,

technique as we're going through the ranks now is very important.

Samba and jive - the knees are soft and compressed so we should have

been seeing long back lines. She was very upright, so it just looked

a bit static almost, but another - absolutely amazing. To open with

this number - my gosh, it was incredible. She was really moved,

wasn't she - the crowd? launched that show in absolute

style, but as the competition goes on now, attention to the technical

elements because the audience will vote on performance, but the judges

will be hitting on these technical elements now. Always with the

technical elements. Kimberly and Sasha with their samba. How did she

cope with this dance? Brilliantly. In this dance she took on I would

say the samba role - one of the most difficult roles. It's this

action that is brilliant. To top it all off they go to natural roles as

well - very, very difficult to do. Why is it difficult? In the Latin

dances when we have - we have full body contact. One of them goes

wrong in a samba role it could fall apart. We potentially don't see

many celebrities take that sort of choreography on. Lewis and Flavia

and their American smooth - was it an American smooth or a quick step?

Putting my technical hat on, in my American smooth there are only four

dances we use, a foxtrot, a waltz, a Viennese waltz or a tango. Ango.

Right. They form the foundations of the dance, and then we separate it

into the lifts and big lifts that make it a Fred and Ginger dance. We

hardly ever use the quick step, but I am all for it because taking a

gamble can go one way or the other. On this occasion it didn't go her

way, but taking a gamble can make you a frontrunner. If you look at

what we had here it was a first- class quick step. They're not

breaking a way, and holding something like that she could have

gone into a promenade position or breaking away from them, but she's

kept the entire routine into a closed hold until the end and a

little break-away there. Did they pull it off? The big gamble - in my

opinion, on this occasion, sadly, no. Michael and his Latin smooth -

we were expecting great things from him because we know this is a style

that suits him, but did we Nigeria so good? I never expected this from

Michael. Fantastic for Natalie for creating that. The music literally

told you what to do - # Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh #

Kick the legs, present it, whoosh it. They literally stole the show -

incredible. One little thing we'll pick up on - you know, the pivot

turns there, a little bit hunched over coming back into hold, but do

you know what? At Wembley, you forgive those things like that when

we're away from Wembley we're going to be looking closely - look at

that - look at the kicks! Third one in at the back there - no

my dreams. Victoria and Brendan and their paso doble - Brendan said her

shaping wasn't so great - Bruno. Was her passo intense? It didn't

have the intensity, but I think the entire - the British flag, the

bicycle, Wembley - the paso doble got a little bit lost. In reference

to Bruno, he talked about the arms which was a major technical element

we understand. The elbow is always higher than the wrist so you're

creating these flamenco arms and using the arms, so even if I

elevate upwards the arms are working there. If the hand leads,

it goes almost American smooth. You can see here it is a bit soft and

flowy. These - the elbow needed to be leading and then create the

width - the flick of the skirt attitude is what it needed rather

than gracefulness of it. It's a shame because actually I think that

the content of the choreography was brilliant. There were twists in it.

There was great choreography, but there was something very

interesting and very, very difficult - musically, it started

with the eight beats - one through eight. It changed halfway through

to six beat, then it goes back again to eight. That means it will

limit Brendan to the steps he'll choose with that song it was quite

restrictive as well to the great paso doble steps. I would have

liked a little bit more stamping, a little bit more attitude. The real

gypsy lady is what I would have liked. Len said it had both

quantity of steps and quantity of movement. How well did this couple

do to cover that vast floor at Wembley? Ten. Lets of people

thought it was undermarked. Absolutely. The first reason it was

undermarked is Smurf and Smurfette went one-and-a-half times around

the floor - how they did that - I can tell you how they did it - we

talked previously about using the standard leg. We have had tall

celebrities on the show that couldn't even make it across the

BBC stage here. We've got Wembley here - around they go. It's the use

of the standing leg, and what I also loved about this routine - he

was so cool and calm - "You know what? Let's just play around slowly

in front of the judges. I have all the time - hey, let's speed it up a

bit and go across the room - a little slick turn and boom, back to

centre stage. Brilliant. choreography was loaded with so

much, it was incredible. I absolutely loved it. It was amazing.

Absolutely amazing. Ten, ten - tinge, tinge, tinge, ting. You're

absolutely amazing and incredible. Karen Hardy. On Saturday, Team

Smurf gave the performance of the competition so far. I'll be talking

to them in a moment, but first, here's a reminder of how they

brought the swinging '60s to Wembley. The quick step is about

the quantity and the quality. For me the quantity of steps was there,

the quality of movement. Little Ms Dynamite - you were fabulous.

placed, precise, the foot placement, precise. The changes in direction -

a wonderful job. Fast, efficient, fearless - I loved it. Wow. You can

eat up that dancefloor - my goodness! I loved it. Nine. Nine.

Nine. I can't believe it. That's the best feeling I've ever

experienced in my life. The fact that we got our highest score to

date at Wembley - it just doesn't get any better than that. No.

speechless - the reason I am still talking... Me too! Me too.

Brilliant. Please welcome Dani and Vincent.

APPLAUSE It was truly amazing, and

congratulations, Vincent, because you got your standing ovations from

the women... I couldn't wait. was all you wanted. How brilliant

did you feel out on that gloor? was honestly just the most amazing

experience. I didn't expect that reaction at all. It was just

brilliant, loved every second of it. How quickly did you get home to

watch it back? I did watch it back, and yeah, it was really good. The

floor was amazing. It was fabulous, absolutely. We really did travel

around that floor, which I think we were both nervous about, but we got

around it. The thing is when you first walked out and saw the size

of the floor, you were a bit overwhelmed. How nervous were you

before the show? It's really strange. I think it's the most calm

both of us have ever been. It was so strange. It only hit me after we

finished that, my gosh, I just performed at Wembley. Dani was kind

of dreading this performance at the beginning of the week. Yeah, it

wasn't an easy dance for her. As we always say, people are suited more

- there was lots of running involved, which is fun, but keeping

the whole - the directions the musicality... Did she surpass your

expectations? Of course she did. many messages from people saying

that you were undermarked, young lady. Diane said, "Brilliant. No

negative comments. Why did they not get tens from the judges?" Yene

said they should have got three tens the same as Denise. We thought

she was just as good, if not better. So there! What do you make of that?

That's pretty cool. There's a statement. Four nines is still a

really good score. I can't complain about that at all. No, no

complaints about that. Some say you're becoming the dark horse of

the competition. Dark pony. She hasn't made it to a horse yet.

You're only young. What do you think about that? Do you think,

yeah, my chances could be all right here? Do you know, I think it's

good to be the dark pony. I quite like it. We're slowly creeping up

and improving every week. That's what I wanted. You have been

dancing together for a few months now. How do you keep her motivated,

Vincent and yet keep it fun in the training room? Hello! It's hard to

say. Next question, please. Let's talk a bit about the language

barrier between you... Disaster. had a bit of a confusion between

pose and pause. And menopause. Which is my favourite. Last week in

the training room, it was another P word, "prawns". Prawns. Prowns!

LAUGHTER Prawns.

LAUGHTER Say

Say it

Say it again,

Say it again, please.

Say it again, please. Prawns. I said in the restaurant - "Can I get

the prawns." You said it right. It's just your accent that was

making me giggle. Prawns. I always say it that way - "prons"! Nobody

understands me. I'm still so lonely in this world. I just - I love him.

So unfair. We want to know, why were you discussesing prawns?

Because she doesn't like fishes. She's scared of fishes. She has a

phobia. I am scared of fish. flavour of the prawn... Still makes

me laugh. The samba this week... Bring it on. How is it going?

going really well so far. Obviously, I've got a really good teacher, so

that's good. Yeah, I am picking it up well and we have a good song.

know what it is, and we're not going to say. We know nothing.

We'll make them wait for it. How is the bounce action? It's getting

there. It's coming. She's good at Latin dances - if you're good at

both. She's good at both. It's surprising. You have a good teacher.

It's all because of me! Can we see some tricks for some tens do you

think? Yes, we have to. We have to. I think it would be amazing to get

at least one ten. I just asked, who has got the highest score in samba

ever, and you hold the title. How could he do that to us? Go on,

smash it! We will really smash it. I'll be so bitter! Good luck again.

Amazing shoes, by the way, Dani. Check out those shoes. Aren't they

incredible? Love them. Everything was bitter and better on Saturday,

but can the same be true for the costumes? Who better to tell us

than theo so stylish Julien # Playing Material Girl by

Madonna.) Please welcome Lord Julien

MacDonald. APPLAUSE

I have no authority to do that! Did you enjoy Wembley? I thought it was

Strictly fabulous! It was. Were you out of your seat with awe at the

outfits? I was screaming. There was everything I love - fringes,

colours, even a few ruffles. There were ruffles. We'll discuss the

ruffles. As always, you chose in your top three must-see looks - who

is your number three this week, do you think? My number three of the

week is the fabulous Dani. Look at her gorgeous skirt - dare we say it

there are ruffles! Woo! There are 150 ruffles. My God. That's almost

too many for most to bear. Tell me more details about the ruffles in

the skirt. This ruffle is striped ruffles, so it's gathers of a

striped fabric all gathered and ruffled together to make 150

ruffles on one tiny skirt. She has been ruffled up. I know. It is

quite. What is it made of? It's been raw cut. It allows the ruffle

to be light and float. I never knew anyone could make a ruffle sound

just so exciting as you did. What about the sequence? These ones are

slightly different to the ones they normally use. There are 2,000

striped circular sequence on one tiny top. These sequins are baby

pink, a fabulous colour. I love the contrast with the black band and

the baby pink which makes them look quite sporty and athletic. She did

look absolutely gorgeous. Who is your number two this week?

number two of the week took me by surprise. There she is. It's the

fabulous Victoria. Giving us a little whoosh of her skirt there.

It's quite an unusual outfit. What stood out about this for you?

love the drama of the outfit. I loved that she had a leotard

underneath it - this fabulous panel skirt which just went up and up and

up. It's a seriously impressive skirt. How much fabric did they use

Apparently eight metres of fabric in a melty panelled skirt which was

colour blocked. A pattern cutter's nightmare I imagine. Can I just say

9,000 crystals. Is that the most we have had on an outfit? That's the

most. 5,000 Navy blue, 2,000 red and 2,000 crystals the makes nine.

Thanks for doing the maths. Who is at your top spot this week? She's a

bundle of few. It's Lisa Riley. was awesome on Saturday. She's a

very, very curvy woman. What design tricks have been used to show off

her curvaceous figure? She's using a colour block. Colour block is in

trend. It's where you mix two contrasting colours together, like

pink and like orange, the fact that these colours are strong and

confident on her body - you forget about what's inside. You just think,

wow, she looks amazing teamed up with, again, more fringe - all

wrapped around, wrapped around, wrapped around. A person running

around like this - "pin it!" Let me tell you, there is a lot of

fringing, then underneath the fringing up a tonic of a lot of

sequins. Wow! And what can you tell me about the crystals over her

shoulder? That's really pretty, isn't it? This helps her look

really gorgeous because the thing is there is over 4,500 crystals

encrusted on to a lace base on a tulle illusion. Hang on. Can you

just say that again! The tulle illusion is transparent net. The

lace is cut off, put on to the tulle, then embroidered by 4,000

crystals. Right. Everyone has to get tulle illusion into their

conversations at work tomorrow. There is somebody creating a fab

trend... There is definitely fashion in the training room. It

has to go to Mr Robin Windsor. at him in the vest. He does wear it

so well. Do you have a favourite in the vests? This has to be my

favourite - the cut-away grey vest with hood. Is this something we can

all do at home? I have been busy today and have made him a special

cut-away vest. So exciting. It's an original. He could sell this for

lot of money. Look at this. I have ruffle in. There wasn't enough room

for a ruffle on this vest. Look at the back. We'll make sure he dons

that for you. Thank you, Julien MacDonald. Thank you to all of my

guests. Tomorrow, I'll be talk tens with Denise and James. Plus,