My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist. Also, I have a column regarding the SCC’s lengthy delay in deciding R. v. Suberu here. Guess which one has F-bombs in it!

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.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist. But ALSO, I have a point/counterpoint column about the Tamil protests here. And on top of that, my first summer column for thecourt.ca is here, although it’s really just a longer, more serious-sounding rehash of the diversity arguments from last week.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Top comment: Nemesis may fail as a Trek movie, but it is a complete success as a comedy. It is probably the best comedy I ever was surprised by.

It’s probably the best prank I’ve ever seen, and people got paid to do it. — Lister

Final thoughts on So You Think You Can Dance Australia:

1.) I think everybody in the building expected person A to win, including person B (who was all but saying “you’ve got this in the bag” to A on stage), and when B won they were completely staggered. And A, to their credit, was not surprised at ALL. Best reality show win ever.

2.) After last year’s finale opening, which had the choreographers dancing with the contestants in a great group routine, I didn’t expect anything more than that (which was the best group finale routine in SYTYCD history). I certainly didn’t expect them to try and top it with a routine featuring the entire top 100 contestants. But they did. Which is why I love this show so very much.

(Okay, so it was partially pre-filmed. Big deal, it’s still visually fantastic in every way that matters.)

Good on you, Aussies! Can’t wait for next year. (And if Dom doesn’t make top 20 next year I am going to have to come down there and smack some people around.)

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

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.” [↩]

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

I was chatting with a friend of mine today as we sat around a bunch of fellow nerds, and he asked me about my summer employment – I told him I was working for the assistant dean at Osgoode (which I am), and naturally his response was to start making “crusty old Dean” quotes from the episode of The Simpsons where Homer goes to college. Naturally I jumped in (“yeah, and she played bass for the Pretenders”) because, you know, nerd.

But here is the horrifying bit: the younger nerds around us did not recognize the quoting, and when we told them it was The Simpsons they were amazed because to them, that’s not what they immediately identify with The Simpsons.

So, in conclusion? Be forewarned that if you recognize references to fifth-season Simpsons episodes, you may well in fact be an old person in addition to being a nerd. Consider this a warning. You are welcome.

Top comment: I for one appreciate this reminder that for all your impressive Canadian blogging awards and talk about law school, you are still just another nerd making fifteen-year-old Simpsons references. — Jim Smith

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.