Nuroc Dance Company has been involved with the hit TV Show
Dancing with the Stars 3 times now!
August 2009 – Charles choreographs & teaches two couples!
The story so far! The most controversial Dancing with the Stars show to date!!!!
Luda & Lincoln!
9 days before West Coast Swing is due to hit Australia’s TV screens Nuroc Dance Company receives a phone call from Luda Kroitor that they need some choreography for a West Coast Swing routine, which will be performed on the show, in just over a week!
Music is forwarded by email that night and the next day Charles Gil (from Nuroc Dance Company) & Leanne Landels (from West Coast Swing Australia) are on the dance floor teaching Luda & Lincoln Lewis a West Coast Swing routine!
Luda & Lincoln received in total about 5 hours of dance tuition from Charles Gil over about 3 sessions and bam they are as ready as they’ll ever be, to perform a West Coast Swing routine on national TV! (Bear in mind too Lincoln was in hospital on the Monday after the show due to him being sick with a cold/flu which therefore left him with less time to practice!)
Worth mentioning is that Luda is a Salsa dancer and Lincoln is an actor who has no WCS experience! They did a fabulous job and we are so proud of them both!
To see their routine on You Tube below:
http://www.youtube.com/v/NUL7FrzoNq8&hl=en&fs=1&
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ADAM & JADE 
Adam Brand (country music singer) & Jade Hatcher also requested that Charles Gil teach them their West Coast Swing routine – So Charles, with the help of Bianca Faber (West Coast Swing Melbourne) and Leanne Landels (West Coast Swing Australia), choreographed and taught Adam & Jade a routine with again approximately 5 hours of tuition. Both professional dancers (Luda & Jade) had some input into the routine and they include some of their own ‘tricks’!
Adam & Jade did a fabulous job with the time they had! Again we were so proud of them – to learn a new dance style and a new routine and perform it!
Adam & Jade did receive a standing ovation from the audience on the night of their performance.
To see Adam & Jade’s routine on You Tube click here:
Adam & Jade went on to win the 2009 series!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/v/itT1WsatcVE&hl=en&fs=1&
NOW THE CONTROVERSY!!!!
This is the controversy that saw ratings go up by about 150,000 to see what the end result was!!! Would Helen apologize?????
Charles Gil was asked to teach a West Coast Swing routine! West Coast Swing is one of the dances that Nuroc Dance Company specializes in - so we know the dance as it is today!!
On the night of the show Charles Gil & Bianca Faber were at the studio where they performed live on National TV! This was to show the audience, judges and viewers what West Coast Swing dancing is today! After their performance Australia and the Judges should know what West Coast Swing looks like as they’ve just had a professional demonstration!
For us watching the judges comments we thought ‘oh no maybe the judges don’t really know what West Coast Swing is’. We formed this opinion after hearing Helen’s first comments to Matt White & Ashleigh who performed the first West Coast Swing routine – she said ‘this dance Swing means swing your hips!’ West Coast Swing is very different from other type of Swing dancing in that you don’t swing your hips – it is a very smooth dance which doesn’t require hip swinging!
The controversy really starts after Adam & Jade perform! The judges critic them and Mark says – it was energetic, vibrant, super and entertaining performance but was it swing? Was it West Coast Swing – I don’t think so!’ Mark says he didn’t see enough basics and asks ‘where was the basic swing!’ They then move onto Helen and she says she didn’t see West Coast Swing! Todd then says there wasn’t even Swing in it!’ Jade & Adam’s routine had a lot of basic West Coast Swing moves in it including, underarm turns and push breaks (formerly known as Sugar Pushes in WCS dancing!) Backstage in the green room while Sonja is waiting to get the scores Sonja says “I think the judges know more about West Coast Coolers than they do about West Coast Swing!”
Luda is backstage and feeling very confused (as Charles & Bianca are backstage, and as I am at home, watching it on the big screen) Luda states to Charles that she is confused and says to Charles ‘the judges are looking for something else, something different?’ Charles is then confused as to what they are looking for, as they have been taught, and Jade & Adam have just performed a West Coast Swing routine, with lots of West Coast Swing basic moves!
Luda & Lincoln go on to perform and after her performance she states to the judges ‘that she is confused as she had a West Coast Swing specialist teach them’ and Charles has confirmed backstage that they are performing West Coast Swing as it is done today!
Some of the comments from the Judges included: ‘Todd – says it didn’t have any swing feel to it – Helen says Swing is a huge genre which you can put Lindy hop and Jitterbug into it”. Luda then says ‘she had Charles backstage who is a West Coast Swing specialist and Helen replies ‘perhaps Charles doesn’t know what he is talking about’.
Controversy takes over the show with the judges all talking to Luda all at once – we are now all confused as Lindyhop and Jittabug moves and styling, do not form part of how West Coast Swing is done TODAY and that’s what the judges indicated they wanted to see!
All we can presume is that the judges expected to see ‘Swing’ as a wide genre of dance to include other swing styles like Lindy hop, Jittabug, East Coast Swing and West Coast Swing! However the dancers and choreographers were instructed to do only West Coast Swing – hence the confusion! We feel the judges got it wrong on this occasion, they were instructed they were judging ‘West Coast Swing’ and that they didn’t really know what West Coast Swing is in 2009, and therefore they thought they were judging ‘Swing’ (which is very different from West Coast Swing) and we feel Luda was well within her rights to ask the questions she asked!
West Coast Swing has evolved a lot in the last 7-10 years and the style has changed a lot – to truly keep up to date you must be travelling to the USA or at least be taught by USA champions every year. Nuroc Dance Company does this and every year we bring to Australia Jordan Frisbee & Tatiana Mollmann who are the Worlds No. 1 West Coast Swing Champions.
See below for Charles & Bianca’s demonstration of West Coast Swing that was performed on the show:
http://www.youtube.com/v/5-RXx1EsCuA&hl=en&fs=1&
See below for Bianca & her husband Brett on Today Tonight:
http://www.youtube.com/v/D8d3k02eEj8&hl=en&fs=1&
See below for Charles & Bianca on Sunrise:
http://www.youtube.com/v/RPAVJG8QwVc&hl=en&fs=1&
We truly thank Paul Green, the dance director and the executive producer John Leahy, for including West Coast Swing – it certainly did spice the show up that week and we hope to get further opportunities to work with the show!!
See below what Skippy Blair in the USA had to say about the contoversary:
http://www.youtube.com/v/eAb0p2zjn20&hl=en&fs=1&
Charles & Bianca in the green room!
Charles & Bianca were also featured in the Magazine New Idea – see below to read Charles comments to the Mazagine!
September 2008 – Charles choreographs a routine for Charlie Delaney (from Hi 5) and Czaba
The story! Well this one was smooth sailing the whole way through the process! Charlie Delaney was so lovely, as was Czaba her professional dance partner! They were taught a routine again in approximately 6 to 8 hours with one week to perfect the routine and then it’s time to perform in front of a national audience! They did great and the judges gave them good scores! Our thanks go to Tova Gallagher also from Nuroc Dance Company who helped Charles with this routine – Michelle was 8 months pregnant at the time with her 3rd child and therefore not teaching and dancing very much so Tova stood in and helped Charles out in places where Michelle wasn’t able to help!
Here’s some photo’s from their routine and our time teaching them!
Czaba & Charlie in their performance outfit which contained a reveal (the skirt came off half way through the routine!)
Charles, Charlie, Michelle (8 months pregnant at the time!!!) Tova also from Nuroc & Czaba
November 2006 - Charles choreographs a group routine, and teaches the 'professional & celebrity dancers' for Channel 7's hit TV show Dancing with the Stars
GROUP WEST COAST SWING ROUTINE!
Charles & Michelle were asked to go to Dancing with the Stars to perform for them a West Coast Swing dance as they were considering putting it on the show. Michelle was still in the USA so Janine Myers (one of Nuroc's Bexley teachers) kindly filled in for her!
After seeing Charles & Janine dance they loved the West Coast Swing (yes they are very smooth and grounded and without any ballroom style at all!)
Charles was then asked to choreograph a West Coast Swing Routine and he was asked to teach the celebrity and professional dancers on the show. ... Unfortunately, Michelle was too sick to go, (after just returning from a month in the USA) so Leanne Landels was asked by Charles to attend with him as his partner. Charles was given the final cut of music on Thursday night (2nd November 2006) and asked to fly down to Melbourne on Friday night (3rd November 2006) to teach the professional dancers and celebrity dancers, 5 hours a day over Sat, Sun, Mon & final rehearsal on Tuesday before the show.... an almost impossible mission - choreograph a routine in 24 hours (still having to attend his normal job all day Friday - yes he had to work almost all of Thursday night/Friday wee hours of the morning to get the routine choreographed), teach people who have never done West Coast Swing before and have them dancing like we do, all in about 15 hours......but hay it was worth a try -you never know and they say any TV publicity is good don't they?
Music choice was not ours although we thought it was pretty cool - They wanted "We will rock you" & "Sexy Back"!
Charles showed the Producer, Judges and all the dancers (including celebrities and professional dancers) and everyone he possibly could down in Melbourne, footage of great WCS dancing - Jordan & Tatiana in particular - they all got chills when they saw it and said they'd never seen such a great dance style before - a style which gave you so much scope to play with the music......everyone loved it! WCS seemed to be a hit with everyone in Melbourne......
Now the challenge - try to get 10 dancers to change their style, in 15 hours of tuition time that was allocated, and learn a West Coast Swing routine. When the celebrity dancers saw the routine they thought 'ha there's no way we will be able to do that' but they did! We were so proud of the job they did in the short time they were given to do it! They all tried so hard and they got the choreography!!!! How good were they - yes they had the ballroom style, and not the smooth and flowing style of true West Coast Swing, but that was inevitable as their just wasn't enough time for that to change.....
As to the ladies dressers - they were beautiful but not of West Coast Swing style but the producer wanted a dress to differentiate between the ladies and men! In West Coast Swing 99% of women do wear pants! Yes I think the show set themselves up for those comments from the judges about Wiggles, but the show is for entertainment anyway so it was a good laugh!
For all those people that asked (and there's been a lot of you) 'Why wasn't Charles & Janine featured on the show demonstrating what West Coast swing should look like' - well the answer 'they ran out of time that night on the show - their was 5 judges and obviously that takes up more time than usual - Charles did receive an apology for this as he was scheduled to appear showing Australia how West Coast Swing is done'. Yes it would have been lovely for the nation to see 2 of our top WCS dancers!'
Nevertheless Charles had an amazing experience and met some fabulous people - the dancers loved him and had so much fun with him.....The Judges want to see WCS evolve and grow and one of the Judges is particularly interested in helping Nuroc grow West Coast Swing...so stay tuned maybe with their help we can make this style grow all over Australia!
A huge thank you goes out to the following people who all helped Charles out with the Dancing with the Stars:
Janine Myers (who partnered Charles in Melbourne on the first occasion to demonstrate what West Coast Swing was!), Clayton (Janine's husband who so kindly let us lend Janine for the day during Michelle's absence!), Leanne Landels (for her help while Charles was choreographing the routine and for attending Melbourne for 4 days to partner Charles while the routine was taught), & Shane McIntyre (our sounding board during choreography!).
Here are some photos - I'm sure you'll recognize the people in them!.
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