How accurate is Dancing with the Stars relative to how real dancing competitions are judged? Turns out there are several aspects for a real ballroom dancing competition, like Posture, Timing, Hold, Line, Poise, Togetherness, Musicality, Expression, and Presentation. Judging is always subjective and can vary, but the skating system is usually used to place couples by ordinals with up to 7 couples on the dance floor during the finals. Judges score couples in the top 50% and they move on to the next round .
This is in contrast to Dancing with the Stars where judges score the couples between 1 and 10 for a total score of 3-30 (since there are 3 judges. The criteria (as many viewers have noticed) is far more subjective.