Ultimate Strictly

AMERICAN SMOOTH

The Dance

The American Smooth is traditional ballroom with a huge dollop of Hollywood glamour on top! Introduced into Strictly in series three, it incorporates steps from four ballroom disciplines - the Waltz, Viennese Waltz, Tango and Foxtrot - but only 40% of the dance needs to be in the ballroom hold, while 60% can be danced apart and unlike traditional ballroom, two lifts are allowed in the routine.

For the ladies, American Smooth dresses will be similar to their ballroom gowns, but because the couple separate during the dance, the front of the dress is as important as the back. For the extra glamour required, dresses are more likely to show more flesh and be lower cut, perhaps with the addition of floats to emphasise the glamour of the dance. The gentlemen will always wear a suit, not necessarily with tails, but always looking suave and sophisticated.

The judges will be looking for the usual hold, posture and clean footwork for the sections in hold, with beautiful musicality when dancing apart. For the lifts, they will want to see smooth transitions at the start and end of the lift, and overall they will be hoping to see that illusive wow factor.

The best of Strictly

In the series five Christmas special, Darren & Lilia scored a perfect scores on Strictly with their routine danced to 'Santa Claus Is Coming To Town'. When series two champions, Jill & Darren, returned for the Christmas special at the end of series six, they decided to dance an American Smooth, a dance that wasn't in the competition when Jill took part, and performed a dazzling routine to 'Favourite Things' and scored an impressive 39 points. We've also seen two 10's for Gethin & Camilla in series 5, and one 10 for Colin & Erin in series 3. Ali & Brian in series seven received their first 10 of the competition for their sixth week routine which they danced to 'A Foggy Day In London Town'.

In series 5, there was some controversy when judge Bruno awarded Kelly & Brendan a 10 for their American Smooth, when the routine included three lifts even though the rules say only two are allowed. The other judges all docked the couple points for the illegal lift, but apart from that, the routine was stunning.

The worst of Strictly

We haven't seen any awful routines, and it took until series 6 to see a pretty bad one from Andrew & Ola, who had problems with posture, footwork, hands and Andrew almost dropped Ola on the final lift, and scored just 17 points. In series 5, John & Nicole scored only 22 points for their dance. John suffered with bad posture, and struggled with the dance as it was his first attempt at ballroom.

Scores for all American Smooth performances:

*Arlene Phillips judged series one to six, while Alesha Dixon judged series 7 onwards.