It infuriates me how tweets about Chris a comedian who happens to be blind (having lost his sight to Retinitis Pigmentosa) who is dancing in the BBC programme either gush sentimentally about how great he is as a blind person, how his partner (professional Dianne Buswell) deserves a special award for teaching him, or how he’s not that good a dancer and better dancers have been voted out by the public.
I don’t personally know Chris but judging by his comedy and the things he’s said himself in various interviews to do with the show, I think like me he faces a challenge by wondering if it’s possible, then doing it.
In this article he admits his fears, and how he thought his part in the show could become a disaster.
I doubt very much he wants pity points for his dancing, and surely a Dianne would have had to adapt how she taught someone with no rhythm and 3 left feet (which is how I would describe myself before sight loss as I couldn’t stand in one place swaying in time to the music).
We’ve had a “celebrity” grouch about the the programme using gimmicks forgetting the programme he “starred” in was all gimmick down to his catch phrase.
Overall it seems to be the comments are all “it’s not fair Chris is given points he doesn’t deserve because he’s taking space from a sighted person”, or “the judges are totally praising him then don’t reflect that in his points”, or the ones that peeve me greatly “Dianne is a saint for teaching Chris”.
I’ll admit over the years there’s always been comments that x got through just on the people’s vote and should have been voted out weeks before. I also ought to mention I’ve never been into it even when I was sighted as I don’t understand the dancing and it was a background noise when I still had a tv and the license. I no longer bother with tv so all my information comes from tweets, etc.
My whole take is yes Dianne will be adapting her choreography and teaching for Chris, but she would be doing that to whomever she was partnered with. But Chris will be working hard to learn the steps, and poses (or whatever you call the posture and hand stuff they do) the same way he would learn routes for when he’s out walking solo. And he wants to be judged on the same level as the other contestants (fairly- no pity points, but also if his dancing was better than someone else’s that should be reflected in the points).
I can only compare it to how I want my quilt making to be assessed. If you sort through a pile of quilts and can’t tell which I sewed, which I tutored a sighted beginner to sew, or which were sewn by more experienced sighted people if you wish to mark them then do so fairly remove a point for mismatched seams, poor stitching, etc, but don’t automatically presume mine is the one with the worst seam matching then give me pity points for trying.
To sum it up yes both partners work hard to accomplish the dance, but don’t belittle their work or that of the other partnerships when scoring their dances. In all good partnerships the professional will adapt how they teach to the person they are partnered with and some people will have to work harder to learn and the teacher has to adjust to make their teaching accessible.
You wouldn’t presume a new dance partner would be automatically au fait with professional dance terms any more than I would sit a person who’s never sewn before at a machine and tell them to thread it up and sew these squares together.
The above photo is my grandson when he was nearly 5 on one of his first sleepovers, we’d learned mummy had forgotten his special car pillow so made one. He picked the fabrics and cut the pieces on a die, then chose to supervise while I was sewing the appliqué down. After stuffing and sewing pillow he was proud to pose with his pillow before going to bed and sleeping well.
When teaching a child we automatically adapt and that’s all that accessible teaching is. Adapting our teaching method to our pupil… unlike the professional who taught me to use my white cane who kept telling me to watch how they did it though they were 10 feet away at the top of a staircase and anything beyond arm’s length was too blurry to understand *facepalm*
Anyway I’m beginning to wander and ramble so until next time.
Was that a dinosaur? 2.0 
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