PBS Ballroom 2015

It's a far cry from the heyday of PBS coverage of the Ohio Star Ball back in the nineties, just 3 hours in all, mostly the showcase dances, but still more real than Reality TV (DWTS).
Last month, and still available at PBS.org. three Friday evenings in a row documented the professional competition. Mary Murphy of So You Think You Can Dance teamed with Tony Meredith to introduce and comment. 
First featured was American Smooth style, the one the most like Fred Astaire's dancing, open, showy Waltz and Foxtrot. Several couples chose a type of Viennese that used the 6/8 style tripling of the music often associated with slow songs. I saw more stretching than ever.
After a half hour of that, American Rhythm was much more to my taste. Swing, not Jive, gave Emmanuel Pierre-Antoine, the Haitian, a chance to give a knock-out performance to James Brown's "I Feel Good." That was just in the finals of the dance styles, the part I used to love when the program was longer. We only got to see the Swing, not Bolero, Cha cha, Mambo or Rumba. All the showcases were excellent, and Emmanuel and his Russian partner won with a Mambo.
The next week, I managed to get the show on my DVR and watch International Standard and Latin styles on my TV. Beautiful dancers went right out of their styles to do the showcases, presenting Western style or Cabaret.
The third week was a special set of showcases choreographed for the TV prize "America's Best Ballroom Dancers". Between sets of showcases, a set of Cabaret performances included the weirdest ever, an exorcism worthy of Cirque De Soleil.