Pretty alright episode, but not really close to being my favourite. The dancing parts were pretty interesting although Alola Hulu wasn't exactly my cup of tea. Team Rocket's plan was pretty generic for them, although they were quite a bit more stupid than usual. They're never the brightest but telling the kids what the weak point in the cages was is dumb even for them. They also seemed to have no means of actually getting out of there with the stolen pokémon, with the cage seemingly stuck to the floor. They just stayed there after trapping the pokémon. Usually they also have a getaway plan. Dumbing Team Rocket down so much also makes their defeat less satisfying. And they didn't even get defeated. Tsareena just broke the cages and then Bewear showed up and took them away. Granted, Team Rocket getting out of there with the stolen pokémon and the protagonists hunting them down and saving the pokémon would have been an incredibly formulaic Team Rocket encounter the likes of which we've seen dozens of times before Sun and Moon and I'm glad we're over that, but this wasn't any better.
Team Rocket aside, I did really like Lillie's dance. It makes me wonder how much more they could've done had they had more time, maybe add in Aurora Veil in there as well while it's circling around on the ice. The combination of the Aurora Veil lights, the figure skating, and falling hail would've looked gorgeous. Granted, it'd be quite crazy to expect such a choreography in three days in-universe. Sophocles was funny, clear transformers/mech things there which suits him and a nice reference to the Charjabug race episode. Kiawe catching fire does suit him as well with his overly competitive nature, he always takes things too far. Lana's idea was fairly cute but nothing more than that, it was more just letting Harper and Sara float in the balloons, we've seen characters float in the balloons a lot already. I'd have preferred it if she had taken inspiration from the Brionne from episode 40 and used Hydro Vortex in her dance. And then Ash, he didn't actually get to perform his dance at all, total disappointment, 0/10. His past contest episodes always had him come up with ridiculous ideas way outside of the box and I'd have loved to see what he could come up with here.
Overall, I'd have preferred it if they had just ditched Team Rocket from this episode altogether and given that time to expand a bit more on the dances, and have Mallow do a completely different dance instead of the Alola Hulu, one with a lot of footwork (maybe expand on the Mallow-kick from the Sandshrew episode). Steenee could've learned Stomp through the dance instead and evolved that way, maybe during its performance. In the current episode learning Stomp wasn't directly related to the dancing part of the episode which makes it feel a bit off and questionably why they had Steenee evolve here, they could've had a similar Team Rocket encounter in any other episode.