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Thoughts, arranged in order of the contestants this time!

-Adechike has personality! I would have liked cleaner stops and starts on the hip-hop, but it was one of his best performances to date just because he wasn’t dancing it like a dance student. I begin to wonder whether that’s simply what he does when he does contemporary. Liked the solo.

-Ashley, yeah. You pretty much said it all. Boring solo, and while the routine was a lot of fun to watch and required great core strength, there wasn’t a lot of substance to it.

-I really liked Robert’s solo, actually. I thought it had excellent musicality and an actual theme, which is more than one can say about most SYTYCD solos. Sonya gets good work out of him, but he is not in the same league as Mark. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen another dancer quite like Mark, and the judges need to stop with those comparisons, because they are not flattering.

-Melinda is… okay. The salsa was fun and energetic, but Pasha had more hip action than she did, and while he’s Pasha and is genuinely one of the best ballroom dancers ever on the show, as the girl she should not be out-hipped by the guy. The solo was technically good, but I just compare everything she does to Bianca’s *brilliant* solo to Tootsie Roll in S6 and it falls flat. Inexplicably, the judges dumped Bianca after that solo.

-Lauren had a really good night and I’m really learning to like her. Excellent work in both numbers.

-Billy just kind of bores me. He’s technically brilliant, but only slightly more engaging than Jakob, and Jakob had all the personality of a rock while on-stage. He danced very well, but Kathryn owned the fuck out of him by showing a commitment to the emotional core of the piece, and a mature musicality that he just does not have. His solo left much the same impression on me. Lovely, but hollow.

-Jose just needs to go home. I’m curious what you make of his breaking skills relative to Sara. Personally I thought she was a mediocre breaker, but she was so damn good at just about everything else that it didn’t matter so much.

-Apply everything I said about Billy and Kathryn to Kent and Allison, only Kent is actively annoying, as you pointed out. I liked Kent’s solo slightly more than Billy’s, because I thought it was well-constructed and a good fit for the music, but it’d have been a lot better if he didn’t dance it like a giddy twelve-year-old.

-Alex again completely owned the night, and if he does not win this competition I will choke a bitch.

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Verklemptomaniac said on July 1st, 2010 at 2:32 pm

I was genuinely worried that Alex was going to end up as the ‘best dancer by far who never quite connects with the audience and ends up going out in the top 3/4’. I’m not so worried about that anymore.

Agreed on pretty much everything else. I did have a somewhat more negative opinion of Melinda’s salsa; she was giving it her all, but her footwork was a hot mess and she doesn’t have enough charisma to cover for it. And yeah, Jose wasn’t good (although he had some really nice lines at points), and he should probably be one of the next few to go, but there’s something to be said for having enough charisma to cover for your technical missteps. Jose has it, Melinda doesn’t, which is why she’s probably going home and he’s gonna survive a bit longer than he probably should.

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Not Legacy’s continued presence on this show is so wrong. Melinda may be the weakest link in some aspects, but even if her salsa was not great, it still had the character of the dance while Jose was doing Not Samba.

Having said that, this episode was the first time the new format gelled for me, and the allover level of dancing was much better. But if they are going to cut out the “cute couples” aspect then they should work with dancer who are more mature. Kent and Lauren have all kinds of potential and charisma but they are like puppies. Melinda and Ashleigh are beautiful and talented but they are not sex kittens.

Alex finally got to show us why he wanted to be on this show so badly.

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Lithera said on July 1st, 2010 at 3:18 pm

I’m beginning to really hate this format. It used to be that everyone got better together and so you could see the people learning and growing but now everyone is always out danced by who their dancing with and most of the contestants look just freaking awful in comparison.

I liked Alex since he auditioned the first time and I am seriously cheering for him.

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squishydish said on July 1st, 2010 at 3:52 pm

Melinda is just not ever fun for me to watch, even when soloing in her specialty, even for just a few seconds. I’d rather see her go home tonight than Jose.
Alex is definitely my favorite at the moment, although I like Lauren, too.

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This is my first season watching SYTYCD, and I know absolutely nothing about the technicals of particular dances, and don’t have memories of prior contestants to use as reference points to decide that a contestant is sub-par. I can only judge on my impression of the totality of the performance.

Under these conditions I can easily understand why Jose is still hanging around. He has charisma and manages to make it through the routines with enough confidence and a sufficient level of skill that it doesn’t look like he is doing the dance obviously wrong (to someone who knows nothing about dance). He may be skipping some expected steps or making technical mistakes, but generally it seems to flow as a cohesive performance.

He probably also owes a lot to the all star format. His partners pick up the slack and his mistakes don’t horribly detract from the overall entertainment value of the routine for clueless viewers like me.

As the lower tier dancers reasonable on technicals but lacking in charisma/entertainment value continue to say their goodbyes, Jose will eventually hit a wall where he’ll be up against dancers with great technicals and reasonable charisma and his smile won’t be enough to save him.

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Jose’s samba was *strong*. I’ve seen far worse performances get much better reviews, both from the judges and right here on MGK. I agree that overall he’s weak, and needs to go, but I think credit should be given where it’s due, and this week he did good.

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A trouble with the new format is the resident latin dancers Pasha and Anya. They’re incredible, but they don’t allow the same kind of variety as the numerous contemporary and hip hop dancers that can fit any contemporary, jazz, theater, “cultural” situation you put them in. Unlike the old format where there were typically 3-4 partner dance routines got to pad the show, there’s only two. Furthermore, latin dancers are teeny tiny people. Itsy bitsy little mole people. So when a kind of slight guy like Pasha dances with kind of tall Melinda, they’re practically the same height. They square up pretty exactly. That’s why things like that jump up to her shoulders, drop down to the floor trick didn’t work. On a shorter woman, it wouldn’t look like he was trying to knock his partner out with his dick. Without Dmitry or Benji or Jamie or Stanislav, etc—Pasha, as incredible as he is, won’t exactly fit all the women on the show. And to have two of her routines with Pasha, Melinda got the short stick… and it smacked her in the face.

Meanwhile, where the fuck is a ballroom (non-latin or social/nightclub) routine?

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Jose’s not going into the bottom 3 for a while. Not because he’s good, since he isn’t, but because he’s wildly popular. Over on the official Facebook page, his showday posts are getting more likes than anyone but Kent and Alex.

Meanwhile, after all the fuss about a guy/guy routine, next week’s show will have both All-Star and contestant dances. If the six remaining guys and two remaining girls all have to do a routine with each other, that’s going to be at least two more guy/guy routines. If they’re smart, they’ll do all same-gender partners to avoid bias. We’ll see.

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I don’t watch SYTYCD. I just watch what you put up here.

Wow, Alex is AMAZING. That was a hilarious and rockin’ routine.

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quirkygeekgirl said on July 2nd, 2010 at 2:29 pm

I also want to punch Kent in the face, or find someone to fuck him until he loses the ah shucks face; I wouldn’t do it but I’m sure I could find someone who would.

I loved Alex and Twitch in that routine and cannot wait for more of Alex out of his comfort zone.

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