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 all five ballroom disciplines - the Waltz, Viennese Waltz, Tango, Quickstep 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, three lifts are allowed in the routine (the rules have changed over the series, and three lifts are now allowed).

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.

Strictly statistics

As at the end of Series 10 excluding Christmas Specials.

The best of Strictly

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', but it was in the semi-final, when they danced the American Smooth again, this time a routine performed to 'Come Dance With Me', that they scored the only perfect score so far in the history of the main competition and were awarded with five 10s from the judges (Darcey Bussell was the fifth judge for the final three programmes of series seven).

In the series five Christmas special, Darren & Lilia scored a perfect score with their routine danced to 'Santa Claus Is Coming To Town'. Also 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

Without doubt the worst we've seen on Strictly so far, has to have come from Ann & Anton in series 8. Anton did his best with the choreography and even manage to include some lifts, but for the majority of the dance, Ann was either standing still or walking, or when actually attempting to dance, was out of time and had poor hold and posture. Difficult to find anything good to say about the routine at all, and the judges marked them just 14 points.

Scores for all American Smooth performances:

All dances from highest scoring to lowest scoring

*The score for any dances marked by five judges have been adjusted down to allow for fair comparison, so the score in this column is the adjusted score followed by the actual score in brackets.

The perfect scoring dance from Ali & Brian in series 7:

Controversial, but Ultimate Strictly's favourite ever American Smooth from Kelly & Brendan:

And a couple of Christmas Crackers from series 3 champions Darren & Lilia and series 4 champions Jill & Darren: