Just Dance!

There's been such an uproar about the Russian ice dancing pair that tried so unsuccessfully to highlight an Australian aboriginal dance in their Olympic routine. We didn't see their performance, but let me ask a question here. Whose bright idea was it to have the ice dancers skate their impressions of ethnic folk dances, dances that people have kept alive through centuries of tradition? Did they not think that the addition of ice and skates and compulsory elements like 'twizzles' would pretty much mangle the dances they tried to feature? I think about the Canadian couple dancing that Paso Doble knock-off. It was striking, but not much to do with a Paso Doble, or a bullfight. That red skirt could have been a lot more dramatic with a sharp assymetrical hemline to symbolize the matador's cape. Or the American couple in the Indian garb, and him with those wild blonde locks. I'm just saying... I am not myself ethnically offended by any performance I saw. Nobody was crazy enough to ice dance a polka. But I was mildly put off by the French interpretation of a hoedown. It wasn't so much the chaps or the Daisy Dukes or the bow-legged swagger, but that they were, well, the French!