Obviously the best qualified people to answer are David and Lily, but as someone who's competed a few times, here are some thoughts (partly based on what has/hasn't done well in the past):Originally Posted by Graham W
Tricks you can't do "well" are best avoided. Not only will you get marked down quite hard for an out-and-out mistake, but you won't get a lot of credit for a move that you completely stop dancing for.
Looking at results over the last year, the size of the moves does matter a lot. I don't think it's possible to be competitive only doing "mini" aerials.
In theory, the smoothness of the aerials, the dancing in/out of the moves, musicality and the general dancing are all important. In practice, unless the aerial content is pretty close, it doesn't seem to make a lot of difference. I think partly it's because competitors have to trade off one thing against another - it's far far harder to have nice entries and exits on overhead lifts than waist high ones, so it's hard for the judges to compare. When it comes to musicality and dancing - if your partner is in the air for 2 minutes, there's not much time for dancing, and if you only did lifts where the music was right for it, you wouldn't get in nearly enough aerial content. So again, to be competitve, those things go out of the window.
It does seem there's been a drop-off in interest in the aerials category; as you say, it does now take an awful lot of work to be competitive. It's also very physically demanding. I'm not sure what the answer is, to be honest.
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