Lights! Flashing! Mary Murphy screams again! Cat Deeley wears a spectacularly ugly dress! Li’l C is the guest judge and his metaphors are off the hook, y’all!

Randi and Evan: jive. First off, I think we all owe Alex da Silva a big thank you for getting indicted for statutory rape so that Louis van Amstel can take over as the new lead ballroom choreographer on the show, because jeez talk about an upgrade. (But seriously, Alex da Silva is a terrible human being and a mediocre choreographer to boot.) That having been said, this was an extremely soft jive and jive should not be soft. It felt like a jazz piece, which, given that we have two jazz dancers here, is not surprising. Evan and Randi were very charming, though, so they managed to pull off a decent personality-based routine mostly on being engaging and enthusiastic.

Melissa and Ade: jazz. Hey, did you know that Sonya Tayeh is weird? She’s weird, you know. Weird and eccentric. I know this because they keep telling me that. Over and over again. Anyway, this was good, although I felt Melissa was at times ballerina-light-stepping a bit through the routine. These two should be safe, but for some reason I don’t think they will be.

Kaitlyn and Jason: hip-hop. I love Shane Sparks’ choreo, but the execution here was mediocre. Mary Murphy was clearly watching last week’s Bollywood performance in an alternate universe because their unison last week was a joke, not “dead on.” This week’s unison was similarly bad, but this time it was Jason who was on beat and Kaitlyn who was way off. Jason hit his beats cleanly and sharply, like you’re supposed to do in a hip-hop piece, and basically got called out for being better than his partner. Kaitlyn’s limitations are showing up quickly.

Carla and Turk Jeanette and Brandon: disco. Not the worst Doriana Sanchez number ever, but nowhere near the best disco on this show; the routine was so frenetic that at times it seemed desperate. But the lifts weren’t too forced by Doriana standards, and there was an acceptable amount of cheese, and Jeanette and Brandon danced it quite well for the most part – which given its obvious level of difficulty is impressive.

Asuka and Vitolio: Viennese waltz. After some crap about how he wants to tell a story about Vitolio’s hard life, Louis van Amstel apparently said “hell with it” and just went for a sweeping waltz. Which is fine. Vitolio’s carriage in this was pretty bad (Nigel likes to use the word “lines” to describe how male dancers hold their arms, but there’s more to lines than just arms), but his performance quality was excellent. Asuka was very strong in all respects. Should get them out of bottom three; this was sweeping and magnificent, Vitolio’s carriage aside (and that was ignorable).

Kayla and Max: pop/jazz. So nice to see Brian Friedman back on the show; I’ve enjoyed his previous routines and he’s always good for something that’s kind of dirty and nasty fun. This was no exception. Kayla is getting pimped to the moon by the judges for performances that, while good, are not the psycho-awesomeness they claim them to be. Max was much, much better than I expected him to be, and hit his moves very cleanly and sharply; I’d like to see what his hip-hop is like. These two are probably the early frontrunners.

Karla and Jonathan: contemporary. Hooray, Stacey Tookey gets called up to the big leagues! And her choreography on this piece was just excellent, definitely a head above a lot of the average contemporary choreo on SYTYCD. Jonathan and Karla danced it acceptably-to-good; I wouldn’t say “great,” I think they did well enough and the choreo was excellent. Mary saying that Jonathan was better at this than he was at his own style is not shocking because Jonathan is a really mediocre Latin dancer. Might help them avoid bottom three if damage has not been done too early.

Jeanine and Philipchbeeb: tango. Ouch. See, this was in one sense comparable to the Asuka/Vitolio waltz from earlier in that the technique for one partner (Philipchbeeb) was bad and it needed emotional performance to save it, but unlike Vitolio, Philipchbeeb was clearly nervous as all get out and couldn’t concentrate on his excellent chemistry with Jeanine. There were flashes of it, but nothing sustained. On the bright side (if you like Philipchbeeb), this was probably the single worst thing he could have drawn; tango is probably the most difficult ballroom dance for a novice (with the exceptions of quickstep and possibly foxtrot, and I think Philipchbeeb would have had an easier time with the quick movements of quickstep than with the slow, sultry ones of tango). Jeanine was very decent, though, and impressed me. Of course, I think they’re safe, because Nigel basically bent over backwards giving the audience permission to vote for a bad performance and even if they don’t get the votes no way will they get eliminated by the judges.

Ashley and Kupono: hip-hop. This was bad, bad, bad. Not one of Shane Sparks’ best routines (he had a good idea with the “shadow” theme and then abandoned it halfway through), but Kupono and Ashley were just not very good. Ashley was a bit better than Kupono but not by much – however, she didn’t look as outright lost as Kupono did. Remember how I said a few weeks back that we were in for a lackadaisical season of hip-hop at best? This is what I was talking about: a bunch of contemporary dancers who can’t do anything but dance soft, limpid hip-hop. Speaking of which, Nigel has to shut the fuck up about how much SYTYCD has done for hip-hop, which is actively delusional. Tabitha and Napoleon making hip-hop palatable to middle America is not particularly an accomplishment.

Predictions for bottom three: Ashley and Kupono, Kaitlyn and Jason, Melissa and Ade.
Should go home: Kaitlyn and Kupono.
Will go home: Kaitlyn and Jason.

The top 20 is finally here! Look at them dance! Your host is Cat “best host ever” Deeley. Your judges are Nigel Lythgoe, Mary Murphy, and Adam Shankman, who just wants you to know he loves the whole world and everything in it. Be prepared for an onslaught of praise, because “top 20 week” is synonymous with “be generous to the dancers so everybody will think it is a good season regardless of how good the actual dancing is.”

– Jeanine and Philip: hip-hop. I feel that I should call Philip Philipchbeeb, because everybody thinks of him by his full name thanks to his decidedly non-average trajectory to the top 20 and also because when your last name is “Chbeeb,” you are Chbeeb for life. Anyway, he absolutely killed this. Killed it. This wasn’t a particularly hard-hitting routine by any means (come on, it’s Napoleon and Tabitha), but Philipchbeeb’s stops and starts are some of the crispest and cleanest I have ever seen, and he elevated what would have otherwise been a perfectly average Naptha lyrical faux-hop to something pretty damn good. Jeanine, for her part, was present, but Philipchbeeb partnered her very well, pointedly drawing the eye to her with his armwork on more than one occasion.

– Asuka and Vitolio: Broadway. This was god-awful shit. Asuka and Vitorio did not dance it well, and Tasty Oreo’s routine was a boring, boring, boring number (and Adam Shankman was pretty clear that he wanted to say so, but Adam Shankman is a polite nice man who loves the whole world, so clearly he could not do that). This was a mountain of suck in a mountain rage of blow-ass. Asuka clearly drew the short stick tonight, being the sole non-contemporary dancer to have to dance entirely out of her native style. But in fairness, Vitolio was stiff and generally not very entertaining either.

– Karla and Jonathan: cha cha. The judges raved about this, but I wasn’t very impressed; for a Latin ballroom dancer, Jonathan’s dancing wasn’t exactly inspired, the tricks weren’t executed very cleanly and Karla’s basics weren’t that great. On the plus side, the two of them have good chemistry, and that should carry them along for a while. On the down side, sooner or later you have to deliver, and based on this performance I’m not hopeful for delivery.

– Randi and Evan: jazz. Tasty Oreo again, but I am more generous to Tasty’s (usually good) jazz pieces than his overhyped Broadway numbers. This was a strong number, both in the choreo and in Randi and Evan’s dancing. Not as glorious as the judges made it out to be, not by any means – but it’s good. Good partnership, good chemistry, good technique, good everything. I have nothing else to say, really, because this was Perfectly Acceptable Dancing.

– Paris and Tony: hip-hop. This was pathetic. Tony was actually not as good as Paris in this, and hip-hop was, as I recall, supposed to be his specialty. This is not to say that Paris was particularly good, because she was not good; off-beat for most of the routine and hitting her beats softly. She was just better than Tony. The design of the routine itself was mediocre at best. Hopefully after this week we can have different hip-hop choreographers than Napoleon and Tabitha, because they are very nice people who very frequently choreograph very whiteboy hip-hop.

– Caitlyn and Jason: Bollywood. This felt kind of auto-pilot for me. Caitlyn in particular just seemed to be doing the steps rather than actually feeling the dance; she never really lost that look of “I’m concentrating on the routine” and got into the moment. Jason was better and sharper, but wasn’t in sync with Caitlyn for the unison movements. Still, this wasn’t a bad routine by any means, but it was very middle-of-the-road in terms of quality; good enough to get by this week (especially with the novelty factor that Bollywood still has for the voting public), but not good enough down the line. Then again, Bollywood is a hard style to do on this show, so it’s hard to assess them.

– Jeanette and Brandon: foxtrot. Brandon started out very, very stiff and eased up as the routine progressed, but never really got to that slinky glide that really good foxtrot demands; his footwork went from nervous stutter to okay-but-nothing-special steady walk. However, his lifts were nothing short of insane. He’s like one giant muscle. Also, he looks like Donald Faison on Scrubs, and Jeanette’s hairdo could make her a plausible J.D. substitute. (Not that this matters.) She, for her part, was very good. The routine as a whole was good. Not great, just good, and a promising start.

– Ashley and Kupono: jazz. It’s a Wade Robson thing about crash test dummies, and – well, Wade Robson sure does avoid the choreographer cliches, you got to give him that. This was memorable and weird and fun and danced really well. Kupono’s headbobs in particular added a lot to the piece, but Ashley was good as well. This was strong.

– Melissa and Ade: contemporary. It’s a Mandy Moore piece about falling in love, so if you’re playing the SYTYCD drinking game, take a shot. Melissa, we are reminded, is a slutty naughty ballerina who is 29 and therefore must chug Geritol every night. Ade, for his part, likes music! And this is a very strong piece indeed; the unison is dead-on for some extremely difficult portions of the dance and Ade and Melissa have excellent chemistry. Neither of these two were favorites coming in, but I think they’ve got a shot at frontrunnerdom now.

– Kayla and Maksim “Max”: samba. This wasn’t quite as good as the judgegasm would have you believe, but it was definitely very strong; Kayla’s footwork and bodywork in her role very good, especially for a ballroom novice, and she and Max played to the camera and the crowd excellently. Hot ending to the show.

Predicted bottom three couples: Asuka and Vitolio, Paris and Tony, Karla and Jonathan.
Should go home: Paris and Tony.
Will go home: Asuka and Vitolio.

This was requested repeatedly in comments and then in email, and I didn’t have a post planned for today, and the first competition episode of season 5 is tonight, so I decided “what the hell.”

Group dances in SYTYCD follow an interesting evolution. There weren’t any group dances in the first season (beyond a very brief reunion dance in the final episode which was all too perfunctory). They arrived in the second season as Fox decided to put more money and airtime behind the show and the producers needed something to fill time on the elimination episodes – they were the natural and logical next step after the group-sings on American Idol. This attitude was fairly prevalent during the second season’s group dances, most of which were fairly bland affairs.

However, starting in the third season, choreographers started realizing that the group dances offered them opportunities for fancier, more elaborate choreo than could be put into the brief 90-second competition routines, and started to take advantage of this fact. Still, it wasn’t really until the fourth season of the American show that group dances really started to come into their own as a distinct portion of the show’s entertainment value.

continue reading "The Best Of So You Think You Can Dance, Part Five: Group Dances"

SYTYCD has gotten more adventurous with genre during its evolution as a show, verging out tentatively into various “world” and cultural areas of dance. Of course, these are mostly just dips of big toe in the proverbial water compared to the prevalence of the “big three” genres, and there have been as many missteps as there have been classic moments. (Twitch and Joshua’s trepak from season 4, for example. Or the horrific experience that was wasting Allie and Natalli on a go-go routine in the first Canadian season.)

Tied in with those dances are the ones that don’t quite fit into the “big three.” Disco isn’t quite ballroom – it has jazz and funk elements to it that shove it somewhere into the middle. See also the “nerd ballroom” dances and the nu-swing dances – Lindy hop and West Coast swing most prominently. And of course, there’s always “Broadway,” that catchall for musical theatre-inspired routines, be they Bob Fosse-inspired or alternately inspired by Bob Fosse. (I kid! But not that much.)

So here is the final “best of” list, because there’s too much that doesn’t fit into the round holes on this show not to include.

continue reading "The Best Of So You Think You Can Dance, Part Four: Everything Else"

Contemporary, jazz and modern dance is the hardest of the three “major genres” in SYTYCD to rank and judge for many reasons. It’s the most widespread form of dance in the show, so there are more options to choose from. Contemporary dance doesn’t have obvious, objective rules for a “good” performance as ballroom or hip-hop do. The franchise attracts top choreographers in the contemporary field more frequently than it does choreographers of ballroom or hip-hop. And let’s be honest: because contemporary dance is more obviously determinable to be Art than ballroom or hip-hop (which have the intolerable caprice to appear visibly fun to do), this is the area where award nominations get made, where Mia Michaels becomes Emmy-Award-Winning Mia Michaels, and thus you have critical opinion weighing down upon any list.

Which is a pity, because let’s be honest: a lot of contemporary dance on the show is so, so predictable. Even before a routine starts, the odds that it will be one of “People Fall In Love,” “People Fall Out Of Love,” or “Somebody Dies” are, like, fifty-fifty at absolute least. Which makes it a little more difficult to judge, because you tend to inwardly overvalue, perhaps, the contemporary dance stories that are a little more original but maybe not danced quite as well as some others with more, ahem, traditional stories. A good example of this is the Camilla/Sermsah “kung fu” jazz piece from the first Australian season, which is certainly a good routine but honestly not quite on par with the really best – but I found myself leaving it as a contender right until the end because it wasn’t yet another frigging dance about a boy and a girl falling in love.

You know what I want to see from contemporary dance on this show in the future? More creativity in storytelling. Less “boy meets girl” and more, I dunno, “happy clown tries to cheer up sad clown” or “hacker inflitrates living computer” or “luchador versus evil vampire.”

(And yes, not all the award-winning performances made the list. The infamous Sabra/Neil “table” routine by Mandy Moore was one of my last cuts.)

continue reading "The Best Of So You Think You Can Dance, Part Three: Contemporary"

I know it’s a bit schizophrenic to shove so many dance styles into “ballroom,” because ballroom dance is incredibly varied; a champion salsa dancer can have trouble with a Viennese waltz and vice versa. But even if you remove some of the more obvious outliers (I put West Coast swing, Lindy hop and disco all into the “other” section, just because they’re more fringe and hybrid forms than “traditional” ballroom dances), you still get a wide variety of dance, from the supposedly strict quickstep to the barely-a-ballroom-dance paso doble.

Ballroom performances on SYTYCD are a mixed bag. Trained ballroom dancers don’t tend to last long on the show: Benji and Heidi from US season 2 and Lacey and Pasha from season 3 are outliers because they were so naturally talented at everything. The best most ballroom dancers can hope for is to make the show’s midway point before being eliminated. This means that outstanding ballroom performances on the show tend to be only moderately technically proficient at best, and usually have to get by on the dancers’ personality and ability to master the basics. True ballroomers watching the show (and there are lots because whether they admit it or not, absolutely everybody in the dance world watches SYTYCD and most of them love it for what it is) often use the phrase “hot mess” to describe a “good” ballroom performance on it.

But there’s nothing wrong with a hot mess, even if every once in a while one wants a technically superb performance too. (Again: high quality viewing recommended where possible.)

continue reading "The Best Of So You Think You Can Dance, Part Two: Ballroom"

With So You Think You Can Dance kicking off its fifth season this week, I felt it was an appropriate time to engage in everybody’s favorite pastime: lists! Best-of lists are great! Because you can argue about what should have been on the list and why list item X should not have been on the list.

However, just an overall “best of” list seems like an exercise in futility, not least because comparing between genre is difficult if not outright impossible. So instead, I have elected to present these best-of lists (which have been determined through a rigorous scientific process, doubt me not) divided by genre: hip-hop, ballroom, contemporary, and everything else. Top twelve for each. Why twelve? Why not?

So, firstly, hip-hop. This was actually the easiest of the lists to manage, because outstanding hip-hop and urban dancing is still comparatively rare on So You Think You Can Dance. This is not to say that it is bad; it isn’t, and most of it is reliably entertaining. However, truly standout performances in this genre are much less frequent than in the other major divisions of dance on this show.

An email buddy of mine who is a professional dancer has this theory:

When a ballroom choreographer shows up on the show, they can charge more for classes. When a contemporary choreographer shows up on the show, they can maybe get a few more butts in seats for their next production. But when an urban choreographer shows up on the show, they’re doing it because they want to be the next Shane Sparks and get to that level where they’re choreographing movies and videos and cheerleaders and making so much money they don’t have to be on the show any more. Which is why you get less top choreographers in the genre.

I don’t think this is entirely wrong, but it’s not entirely right either (after all, the other choreographers want to be rich too). I personally think it has more to do with the fact that hip-hop dancers are more likely to be untrained, classically speaking, and tend to be eliminated earlier. There’s just less of a window for them to really impact the show in the way that contemporary dancers do. (Ballroom dancers have the same problem but on a lesser scale.)

All right. Introduction over. To the list! (And I recommend watching the videos in high quality, if your computer can handle it. Rapid hip-hop movements do not translate well to low-quality Youtube viewing.)

continue reading "The Best Of So You Think You Can Dance, Part One: Hip-Hop"

What with both the premiere of the fifth American season, and the fact that the Toronto auditions are this week, which gave me the opportunity to interview Jean-Marc Généreux.

So You Think You Can Dance Australia‘s second season has been quite possibly the best single season of any SYTYCD in any country, anywhere; the level of dance on this season has been absolutely phenomenal, easily outstripping not just the second season of the American version (still the best of the four American seasons so far) but even the first season of the Canadian version (which was even better). Australia’s young dancers seem to have decided en masse to start fusing their styles at a pace well ahead of the Canucks or Americans or indeed anywhere else; if there has been one style of dancer to dominate this season, it has been lyrical hip-hop (a style that I think the various Dance shows have popularized more than any other, as street dancers have been encouraged by the show to learn technique and modern-trained dancers have been encouraged to pick up some harder-hitting skills). And the result has been truly intense, fantastic routines; the failures on this show have been so few in number that they seem all the more dramatic as a result.

Of the four finalists, Talia was probably the dark horse of the four contestants early on because she started out paired with Emmanuel, an untrained but enthusiastic B-boy whose general lack of training meant that Talia’s ability didn’t shine as much as possible. Once Emmanuel was eliminated, though, Talia really got to show off when paired with stronger partners such as Laredo (whom she didn’t have to carry). It didn’t hurt that the week of top 6, she was given two of her strongest routines so far: this hilarious beach-blanket-bingo jazz routine (her facial expressions are priceless – the Youtube quality doesn’t quite do it justice), and a Napoleon and Tabitha lyrical hip-hop which avoided a lot of their frequent sloppiness and managed to tell a story without being wimpy.1

Amy’s inclusion in the top four is one reason I love this show; she’s got natural comedienne looks (which isn’t to say she isn’t pretty; she is, but she is classic “funny face” pretty) and just great all-around skills and she is solidly dependable at everything without being dramatic and she still made top four without having any drama or a dead lover or anything like that. This hip-hop routine (at about 6:00) is one of my favorites from this season for just being straight-up fun hip-hop with no obvious huge stunts and great tutting, and her other contemporary routine (at about 6:45) with BJ the same week was just flawless. She’s got great range and sadly has probably no shot at winning the whole thing, but she’s just great regardless.

Ben is hard to pin down because he’s been so consistently excellent in a not-showoffy way; BJ and Charlie and Timomatic all had much stronger individual moments on the show, but Ben was simply a damn good partner throughout the show in a way that tended to showcase his partners more than him, despite his obvious and clear ability. I think the best example of showing why Ben made it through to top four is this foxtrot (@ 1:40); where BJ and Charlie were competing for the “lovable dork” vote, Ben went through on simply being a strong masculine presence. He’s got a shot at winning, but I don’t think he’ll pull out…

…because in the end, I think the clear favourite is Charlie, the appealing young dork from Dubbo, which is a small town in New South Wales which I am led to understand is just to the right of the middle of nowhere. Charlie’s gawky charm and clear enthusiasm have made him popular with the voters, but what’s kept him in the game beyond that is a level of natural ability that is just stunning; he picks up styles with seemingly next to no effort, and his relatively low level of training (one year of jazz and a lot of hip-hop that’s mostly self-taught) makes this all the more impressive. (Of course, in his element he’s fantastic: consider this animation-style hip-hop with Gianne.) The only negative comments he’s ever received are minor ones about keeping steps in unison, and that’s not a failure of adaptation of style but more a reflection of lack of practice time. Look at this quickstep he performed with Talia; the quickstep is widely and rightly known as one of SYTYCD’s toughest challenges and he makes it look absolutely fucking simple and joyful. He honestly reminds me of nothing so much as a very young and green Fred Astaire, and I don’t say that lightly.

So, yeah – to wrap up a ridiculously good season, the Aussies have four really good finalists. Charlie will probably win (although Talia has an outside chance, I bet). They set the bar really high for the rest of the dance world, and kudos to them.

1. I secretly love how certain snarkers have taken to calling them “Nap-oleo and Tab-ofay.” [↩]

Back when I was first watching it, the initial season of So You Think You Can Dance Australia impressed me very greatly. The dancing and choreography (which Australians call “corry,” which is inexplicably wonderful for some reason) ranged from “solid” to “exceptional,” and my only worry for the franchise was that Australia had used up all of its top-tier dancers in the first season, where only about twelve of the twenty finalists were really good-to-great dancers and of those only three (Jack, Rhys, and Kate) were definite standouts.

But now that the second season is on, it turns out that my worry was utterly misplaced, because holy shit, this season is so much better than the first it is downright staggering. With the exception of Max (thankfully gone with the very first elimination), just about every one of this season’s dancers is at least at the level of Demi last season (“amateur with exceptional talent and work ethic”) and although it’s too soon yet to tell who the true standouts are, that’s mostly because this season’s dancing has been so utterly exceptional.

Usually on an early episode of SYTYCD there are two or three really great routines, three or four okay routines and one or two crapburgers. Thus far on the second season, there’s been a horrendous onslaught of really great routines and then everything else is at the very least okay. (The only genuinely bad routine was the top-20 contemporary by Max and Jesse, which was… yeah. Bad.)

Anyway, it’s still early in the season, but right now my favorites include Charlie, who is much like Joshua from the fourth American season in that he’s primarily a self-taught hip-hop dancer with some technical training and a ridiculous resevoir of talent; Lamb and Timomatic, who have the best team name (“Lamb-o-Matic”) and who although I don’t think they will go all the way (in fact I think both will have a fight to make top 10) have incredible, intense chemistry as partners; Danny, who despite the fact that every choreographer feels the need to include his trademark sideways spinning jump is really ridiculously skilled in the way that only a classically trained contemporary dancer can be; Pania, who is a Kiwi so I feel obligated to root for her as New Zealand is Australia’s equivalent of Canada (and also she is an awesome hip-hop dancer); and Gianne, who is just so awesome on so many levels it is stupid.

And of course there are all the joys that are specific to the Australian version of this show, like the fact that choreographers there tend to fuse styles with near-regularity, so a “lyrical” piece becomes lyrical hip-hop or a quickstep tosses in some breaking just because, or the pleasure of listening to the comments of Jason Coleman, who is quite simply the best reality show judge ever – he is all substance and no bullshit, kind of like what Simon Cowell wishes he was but never will be. (Fellow judge Matt Lee is only a step behind Coleman for excellence in judging.) Plus, there is Jason Gilkison ballroom choreography almost every week, and the sudden, surprising greatness to see that former contestant Marko Panzic – eliminated early in the first season – is probably the most exciting choreographer on the show this year.

The Aussies have done right again. Memo to the producers of the Canadian show: you set a high bar, and they vaulted right over it.

Man, the final four episode was a bit of a letdown after a largely superlative season, wasn’t it?

All four: jazz. Fun way to kick off the show, I guess, but four-person routines in these shows never really gel for me the way two-person routines or larger group routines do. I have no complaints per se; it just wasn’t a big wow factor performance for me. (Also, Leah Miller won a Gemini, which just goes to show they are given out at random.)

Natalli and Nico: salsa. Very complex, but I’m really getting into Gustavo Vargas’ routines because they flow really well. Nico and Natalli did this… well enough, I guess. Given the complexity of the tricks (which was very, very high indeed) it was impressive that they managed to pull it off so nicely, but the first half of the routine – you could see the strings showing, is what I’m saying. But the second half was much smoother and certain as they realized they were pulling off the tricks, so this was good.

Allie’s solo: As good as always, and Allie’s solos are always that much more impressive than most because she does so much of them en pointe. She’s still a very young dancer by any stretch (both in age and in what she brings to her dancing), but her potential is just incredibly vast. She’s not the best dancer on the show right now (Nico, Vincent and Lisa were all better, maybe Arrassay as well), but in ten years…?

Miles’ solo: Surprisingly underwhelming given how relatively subtle it was for him; technically very sound but lacking the nice “holy shit” moment a really fantastic popping routine needs. Miles doesn’t deserve to win this show, honestly – he’s not nearly in the others’ league – but he’s very, very good for someone as untrained as he is, and his work ethic is obviously off-the-charts. I didn’t expect him to do as well as he has.

Natalli and Miles: hip-hop. Oh, poor Miles – after an entire season of being solid in just about anything thrown at him, he collapses in his own specialty by forgetting the steps. This wasn’t even “hide it well” forgetting the steps, like that time Natalli did with her krump routine. This was obvious, blatant blanking which even threw Natalli off her game (despite the compliments thrown at her).

Allie and Nico: contemporary. Magnificent work. Nothing more to be said. Absolutely fantastic.

Natalli’s solo: Okayish, but nothing that really blew me away, and that’s mostly a sum-up of how I feel about Natalli generally. She’s passionate and charismatic – and that’s great, don’t get me wrong – but she frequently has timing issues and her performance quality depends a lot on how good her partner is. I honestly would have preferred to see Lisa in the top four over her, but, hey – sometimes judges have their favorites.

Nico’s solo: The usual melding of contemporary with testosterone that we’ve come to expect from Nico, who is going to win the show and anybody thinking otherwise should be interested in this bridge I’m going to sell them. Nico deserves to win, too – he’s been consistently better than just about every other male dancer on the show (with the possible exception of Vincent, but Vincent muffed at least one routine – his Latin dance with Lisa – and Nico just keeps nailing everything) and he bothers to entertain.

Allie and Miles: theatre. This bored the shit out of me, even moreso than most theatre/Broadway/whatever routines. There was nothing technically wrong with it; it was just a boring routine (standard choreographer blowjob aside) and they didn’t bring the kitchen sink with them.

Natalli and Allie: go-go. I see the same-gender-partner dances have officially become the province of “let’s see what weird-ass style we can pull out of the hat this year.” Seriously, go-go? It’s barely a dance style; it’s an excuse for titties bouncing and little more. This got the worst case of Not The Choreographer’s Fault (hereafter and forever dubbed NCF) ever, because this was a shitty, shitty, shitty routine – boring and trite. But we can’t blame the choreographers! Blame the dancers! Even though they did a reasonable job with the crap material they were handed.

Miles and Nico: capoeira. Now this was the other side of “let’s see what we pull out of our ass” – a clever and inspired original choice for a show like this that worked just about perfectly. For two guys with no experience in the form or necessarily even any martial arts training, this was exceptional.

Final order should be: Nico, Allie, Natalli, Miles.
Final order will be: Nico, Allie, Miles, Natalli.

With extra notes as I actually attended the taping this week, as you are well aware.

Allie and Miles: samba and Afro-jazz. (What happened to calling it “African jazz”? Is dance the last place where using “Afro-” as a prefix can still be acceptable?)

Anyway, the samba was both hot and good. The tricks were definitely on the “holy shit” level of difficulty, seeing as how the crowd repeatedly gasped out “holy shit” for several of them, and the dancing outside of the tricks was very solid (although they did give Allie a bit of help by having the samba be barefoot rather than in heels – not that she hasn’t danced ballroom in heels quite decently already, but this was a whole new level of difficulty). Allie and Miles have good chemistry, too, which doesn’t hurt. They only juuuuuust landed a couple of the tricks, but landed them they did and neither is a ballroom dancer, and those really were top-tier tricks, so I mark this one down as a huge success.

The A-jazz (hah! I will shorten the prefix even further!) was excellent. It was relaxed and joyful, and served as a welcome counterbalance to the intense routines that preceeded it, and the two of them danced it really, really well, with that combination of abandon and control you only get when the dancers are really in the groove. Excellent performance.

Arassay and Izaak: Lindy hop and smooth tango. Benji Schwimmer continues his one-man crusade to modernize ballroom dance by setting routines to whatever song he had on repeat on his iPod this week continues as he sets a Lindy hop to, of all things, “Welcome To The Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance, tossing in a few pirouettes and so forth for variety’s sake. It actually more or less worked. Because it was Benji’s piece you knew in advance the tricks were going to be insane (and they were). Because Izaak was dancing you knew in advance the judges were going to, at best, dismiss him with faint praise (and they did).

The tango was the worst dance of the night, and it was only average at worst. Arassay was fantastic – Izaak was tolerable. Really, Izaak’s problem isn’t that he’s a bad dancer – he isn’t – but he’s far behind just about everybody else remaining (and for that matter, most of the last two weeks’ eliminees) in terms of skill. He’s trying to get by on raw talent and a young fanbase and can’t quite manage it when everybody else is raising the level for this show on an international level. Much like Daario, I get the feeling he came to this show too young and unseasoned.

Vincent and Natalli: krump and contemporary. Natalli is disgustingly lucky that she forgot the steps halfway through the krump routine, because krump, more than any other form of dance on this show, plays to Natalli’s strengths (passion and charismatic dance). If you weren’t watching carefully you would have missed the part where she just stood for half a second in panic before she started improvising herself back into the routine. (I speak from experience, because watching live I didn’t realize she’d fucked up until the judges mentioned it.) She covered brilliantly – but if it hadn’t been krump, where hitting hard is more important than hitting right, she’d be dead in the water. Vincent was fine, in his nonchalant good-at-everything way.

The contemporary was fantastic and there’s nothing more to say there.

Lisa and Nico: “jazz/funk” and hip-hop. The “jazz/funk” (what?) was just a polite excuse for Blake McGrath to do his dirtiest routine possible, and believe me when I say the audience was fine with it and the audio team must have gone overboard trying to de-intensify the girls screaming in the audience – I literally couldn’t hear myself think. (I could hear Colin Mochrie complaining about the screaming.) Anyway, the dance itself was excellent.

The hip-hop was a little more muted in terms of screaming, mostly because the routine itself was kind of bad – the bits with the suitcases were overwrought and clumsy and detracted from the flow of the thing. That having been said Nico and Lisa danced the actual dancing parts of it near-perfectly, as you would expect, and with an interesting kind of restraint given the form. I liked it despite the choreo, I guess. (And then, when they were done, oh my god the screaming.)

Should go home: Natalli and Izaak.
Will go home: Natalli and Izaak.

…because I only just finished watching it about half an hour ago.

Firstly, WTF is up with the top ten episode only being one hour long? Yes, I know the ratings have dropped since the show’s impressive debut, but A) it is competing against the major network fall lineup and B) guess what, CTV, the ratings will drop if you replay the fucking show twenty times on Muchmusic because people won’t feel the same need to watch the original performance. Now Muchmusic’s retarded “play ten shows twenty times per week” policy is killing shows on OTHER channels. Way to go, CTV and Muchmusic! You’re retards.

As to dances:

Izaak and Natalli: hip-hop. Izaak floats through the routine all airy-fairy like always; it’s just his style, his melding of contemporary and hip-hop, which would not be a problem except that he can’t stop doing that which is why the judges keep ragging on him, and rightfully. Natalli is her usual mix of intensity and not being quite on time, and since Izaak is his usual kind of boring the judges slobber over her. Unfortunately, the judges were so harsh on Izaak that I’m betting we see the backlash support vote show up and he stays around to make the show suck for another week.

Nico and Allie: waltz. Very showy and theatrical waltz, but entertaining despite some remarkably crap footwork at times (but only times). Nico is at this point the favorite to win the whole thing and everybody knows it; Allie is probably a ninety percent chance right now to make top four because she is cute and adorable and from the Maritimes, where their only claim to fame is producing reality show winners these days. Nothing here to hurt either of their chances.

Kaitlyn and Danny: mambo. This was a lot of fun and it was good to see Kaitlyn get a chance to dance with somebody who wasn’t Izaak. Danny, unfortunately, may have made a bad choice by doing a boring, slow-paced solo.

Arassay and Vincent: disco. Thoroughly entertaining, although we do get disco-level choppiness at times and the routine didn’t quite flow. But the two of them performed the fuck out of it and they both looked really good. I think both are safe.

Lisa and Miles: contemporary. First off, Sean Cheesman yelling at the judges from the audience at how Miles killed his routine was hilarious (“SYTYCD Canada: Where Everybody Gets Their Say”). I am of course not entirely skilled at judging contemporary dance but I thought Miles did fine and Lisa was excellent. The routine itself was also pretty good.

Should go home: Izaak and Natalli.
Will go home: Danny and Natalli.

Hey MGK readers, it’s occasional guestblogger Karen here to recap SYTYCD Canada for you because Mr. Bird is too busy liveblogging the final presidential election to weigh in on dance.

How are my qualifications as a dance critic? Not great, actually. The MGK has watched every season of every regional variation on SYTYCD since its inception, whereas I have not. However, I have one thing working in my favour: a vag. I was subjected to the requisite six-year-old girl jazz classes, Strictly Ballroom is one of my all-time favourites, and I’m semi-immune to boobs ’cause I get to look at them every day. But I’m not going to pretend to be a technical expert.

Let’s do this anyway.

Okay, it’s the Top 18, Kevin and Bre left last week. Leah Miller is actually growing on me—she had some fairly quippy ad-libs tonight. They introduced some hilarious corporate sponsorship: the Cloverleaf Energy Room where live-audience members can dance and the footage gets posted online. And they’re all like, “Wooo, we’re having a canned tuna party up in this place!” With this and their “Rip-n-Ready” pouches , Cloverleaf is, like, the hippest canned tuna out there!!

Before the show gets underway, Tre gets really serious and says that someone has been criticizing Jean-Marc’s English, and challenges them to get up on stage and do his job in French. Who is she talking about? At first I’m like, “One of the dancers? Someone in the audience?” Someone in the media would make more sense. Anyone know anything about this?

Also, wardrobe check: Tre and Leah look like they went shopping together for the CTV staff Christmas party.

Allie and Danny: “New York-style” mambo. “I like my mambo like I like my cheesecake: New York-style”? Ehh, maybe not. Allie is dancing in a sparkly bikini (as they do in New York) but this mambo is PG13. Danny does some good mambo, but nobody really cares because the cute little ballerina danced the mambo in a bikini and was still cute. Allie has obviously got the technical skills; if she can keep the cute and work in a little spice, she will go far.

Vincent and Lisa: Hip Hop. They dress up as Raggedy Ann and Andy with a little “clowning” flavour and the result is NIGHTMARES FOREVER. Choreography is kind of balls, but their moves are very tight.

Arassay and Nico: Theatre. Dramatic routine about a girl who prays for her dark, sexy guardian angel. Pretty decent! Bonus points for some wierd Christian imagery, and super bonus points for Nico giving new meaning to girl boners. Nico is like the French Canadian King of Girl Boners with his smokin’ bod and mohawk thing and gorgeous accent and eyebrow ring and tattoos somewhere probably. And he’s looks like he’d be all like, “Hey, I’m just going to stay here in my industrial-garage-turned-loft in Montreal and pull an all-nighter editing my documentary with nothing to keep me company but a pack of smokes and some vegan chili—–oh, and then I’m going to go on TV and be an AMAZING DANCER.” Frig, I love Quebec. Quebec’s greatest provincial export is boners.

Francis and Natalli: Pasa Doble. A knockout performance by Natalli. Blake tells Natalie, “You’re making all the girls in this competition look like babies” (and he’s clearly talking about Allie). I am not so sold on Francis in this, because the Paso Doble is dependent on sheer fucking testosterone and he’s just not delivering it. They judges say he was channelling alpha male, but I don’t think they get to see much alpha male on this show.

Izaak and Kaitlyn: Dancehall. First dancehall evarrrrr! Whitest dancehall evarrrrrr! Izaac is sweet, because he’s such a virgin, but it’s killing his ability to perform a believable dancehall number. Kaitlyn did what she could. They dress up like  Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta in Grease as some kind of wierd uberwhiteness-meets-Jamaica cultural mashup, but its not adorable in a Cool Runnings sort of way. Again, the judges allude to Izaak needing to “be real” and again I have no idea what the hell that means.

Lara and Miles: Viennese Waltz. Where is the waltz? Waltz is abandoned for lots of spinning and another crowd-pleasing kiss. The judges say nothing bad and praise their unique “connection.” Who even cares that they barely danced, I actually love this pair. Not for the kissing, but for Miles (who is a popping instructor at Street Dance Academy in Toronto, by the way). On what he doesn’t like about Lara: “The worst thing about Lara is that she doesn’t like pie. If it’s in a crust, she doesn’t like it. I don’t get it.” Adorable.

Caroline and Jesse: Hip Hop. Do they consult about routines before the show? Here we have another hip hop number featuring retro toys: this time they’re toy soldiers. It’s pretty bad, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Jesse go.

Tamina and Joey: Contemporary. EPIC FAIL!!!! Concept: prisoner in jail cell daydreams about his first love to the sound of “Crocodile Rock” by Elton John. The jugdes could barely keep a straight face. Luther said, “[I’m laughing] because it was the happiest jail dance I’ve ever seen in my entire life. And then it ended with a gunshot. So…” I think Jean-Marc said, “You were jumping on the beds, it looked like a sleepover!” The dancers both politely blamed the choreography, and when the camera panned to the choreographer he looked devastated. Then Tamina’s boob fell out of her top. If they get voted off tomorrow (very possible), this number will go down in history for the epic failness.

Dario and Romina: Jazz Pop. I love both of these dancers, but they’re so different and it’s hurting them. Romina, as usual, steals the show as she “dances for her life” but if you have the option of replaying this, watch it again and keep your eyes on Dario. It’s just beautiful. This is why the judges are fighting so hard to keep Dario on the show, but he can’t compete with the showiness of Romina. This couple will only excel once they’re been separated. I hope Dario can hang in there.

Nothing super standouty this week. Will Tamina and Joey sail home on the failboat?

I’ll let MGK make his predictions.

Quite a nice start to the show, overall. The judges are excellent – even the previously kind of iffy Luther was good, and Tre, Jean-Marc and Blake all offered excellent, detailed critiques of every piece.

On the downside, Leah Miller is absolutely horrible – I mean, it’s not just that she isn’t Cat Deeley, it’s that she isn’t anything. She is terrible. Absolutely terrible. She is worse than Ben Mulroney on Canadian Idol, and that is hard to do. Furthermore, the editing on the show is awkward at best; not for the numbers, but the editing of the judges’ comments is very blatant and visible, which is exactly what editing is not supposed to be.

Anyhow.

Arrasay and Nico: salsa. (I see the former Nicolas has chopped off part of his name. Such is life.) This was a very strong salsa routine, far more street salsa than performance salsa (I approve heartily of that choice) with a couple of quite difficult tricks which the two of them pulled off quite nicely. Nico needed to stiffen up his upper frame a bit, but that’s a very minor criticism of an otherwise excellent performance. Arrasay was predictably fantastic. This looks to be a strong partnership.

Natalli and Kevin: hip-hop. This was moderately eh. (And what the hell: “The Way I Are?” Come on, it’s not a year and a half ago.) Natalli was off and Kevin was severely whiteboy, especially in the second half. The judges tried to play nice by pointing out that Kevin was on time and Natalli had charisma, but it fell apart halfway through and was not very good. The first half was actually decent, but the second was ugly. I think they’ll squeak by this week, but they need to shape up. That having been said, I think they’ve got the capacity to do that.

Bre and Francis: smooth waltz. (Didn’t Bre spell it “Bree” in tryouts? Well, whatever.) This was not very good, and that’s mostly on Bre – Francis clearly knew what he was doing and did his best to cover up her problems, but her footwork was bad – not just weak but actively at points unsteady, I mean, you can actually pick out where she was correcting herself through the piece – and it’s clear the choreographer was trying to cover for it by giving her those contemporary-ish short running bits that, you know, really shouldn’t be in a smooth waltz. Smooth waltzes that are not smooth just irritate the shit out of me, because I sit in front of my TV yelling “BE DREAMLIKE YOU FUCKERS” and I do not need that kind of stress.

Allie and young Hugh Jackman – no, wait, Danny: jive. The judges gave this one a bit of a tonguebath, and I’m not saying it was undeserved because the routine was fun and they’ve got good chemistry together. That having been said, the extension on the kicks was occasionally lacking (particularly on Allie’s part, which should not be unexpected because good extension on jive kicks is tricky for a relative newcomer) and that big lift did get bobbled a bit (but not unforgiveably so). But on the whole this was good dancing, and worked out quite well.

Kaitlyn and Izaak: “theater” (which means “Broadway” outside of the United States). This was perfectly okay, as Broadway – excuse me, “theater” – numbers go, and the judges went to town on it, mostly because I think Izaak was playing his part more for laughs than anything else, mugging his way through his highlight parts of the routine. Kaitlyn was perfectly decent if not remarkable. Very middle-of-the-road, which for a first performance is all right.

Lisa and Vincent: contemporary. (Vincent-Olivier has also caught the name-contraction bug, I see. By week six, he will simply be “V.”) This was crazy good. Not much of a story beyond your standard contemporary boy-and-girl-dancing-through-pain-and-love thing, sure, but my god, the extreme difficulty of this piece was obvious and the two of them just fucking nailed every single moment of it. I’m not kidding – this was intensely fantastic. Seek it out on Youtube or wherever if you missed it – it was that good. This was the best routine of the entire night; nothing else even came close.

Lara and Miles: disco. Well, more of a contemporary-ish disco-themed piece as opposed to a standard disco, but whatever, I’m just going to be thankful that I didn’t have to sit through yet another Doriana Sanchez “let’s have seven thousand lifts” disco. I think the much-ballyhooed kiss was designed by the pair of them for a cheap audience pop, but the thing is that they really did dance better afterwards, so maybe the pop gave them some confidence? Anyway, technique not quite there entirely, but the charisma was and it was fun enough for me to give it a thumbs up.

Romina and Daario: hip-hop. Firstly: obligatory Can-con music geekout! Kardinal Offishal! Awesome. (Although if this show sets a piece to a Barney Bentall song, I will not be pleased.) Secondly: the judges all told Daario he wasn’t dancing at Romina’s level, which is true, but Romina was seriously off the hook tonight and Daario was merely quite good, which normally is no great sin but when Romina kills it like that, etc. The routine was great fun, not showy with big tricks but very tight on the floor. I liked this.

Tamina and Joey: tango. Oh god was this bad. Joey was a bit better than Tamina, this was bad on multiple levels. Absolutely zero chemistry between the two of them, for starters (they don’t even seem to like each other all that much). No sense of pacing in the steps, no build to the big dramatic moments that makes a good tango. No real technique, and although I don’t expect a hip-hop dancer and a contemporary dancer to have perfect tango technique, I do expect at least a rudimentary display of it, and there wasn’t even that. Worst routine of the night by a mile and a half.

Caroline and Jesse: jazz. Ersatz comedy piece with giant Afros = fail. Not on the part of Caroline and Jesse, who danced the routine acceptably well if not superbly, and at least got to show off their individual tricks – but damn, this was a stupid routine, pure and simple. Clowning took up much of the time that should have been spent dancing. The double flip was really nice, and the two of them covered up their mistakes (and there were more than a couple) well enough that they should get by. But, yeah – stupid routine.

I’m voting for: Lisa and Vincent; Arrasay and Nico; Allie and Danny.
Bottom three predictions: Tamina and Joey, Bre and Francis, Natalli and Kevin.
Going home: Tamina and Joey.