So You Think You Can Dance? Oh yeah? C'mere a minute!

My best friend was visiting, so we went out to dinner and got home in time for the second hour of SYTYCD - and the cable was sort of out due to violent thunderstorms, so it was really fuzzy, But I had to watch. She was reading a magazine, but she looked at the screen during the bunny dance number - looked at me - shook her head and said 'I really thought I knew you better."

It reminded me of Donnie Darko too. Also "CATS" +"Thriller" + Rabbits. And then they took the bunny heads off!

Season 5 beginning this Thursday!

And isn't it going to be on in the fall or something?

IM ON UR HOT TAMALE TRAIN BEIN CHAUFFEURED BY LOSS, or So You Think You Can Dance 5 (starts May 21)

It's a post-racial world, get with the program.

Season 7 in a few weeks! With Mia & Adam as permanent judges, only 10 dancers/1 eliminated each week, and a rotating set of "all-star" dancers from past seasons as partners. (New rule changes summarized here.)

As long as they've kept Cat Deeley, I'm hooked!

^^^ YES.

I'd rather have Mia choreographing than judging, tbh. I hope she'll take a few weeks off for choreography throughout the season.

Well, this means Mary Murphy will get to choregraph again, no? Her Paso Doble from Season 2 was pretty amazing. Plus, no screams and hot tamale trains for a season.

^^^ YES.

Also, would someone like to start a season 7 thread?

i guess not!!!

thoughts:

- i genuinely hope that nigel creeping on contestant's moms will be an ongoing thing
- "all-stars" thing basically sux
- typically like the judges blah blah blah during auditions - helps maintain the shows charmingly amateurish "lets put on a show" vibe
- but tyce srsly braying like a donkey is just nagl; also he is the worst person alive
- d-d-damn is this show just ws central
- i wonder if competing dance type shows have drawn a lot of the non-contemporary talent or what

FUCKIN TYCE

that guy is such a douche but also the most hilarious judge on the show. i watched that docu about dancers trying out for 'a chorus line' a little while ago and tyce was one of dancers. his attitude to getting rejected for the show was ~so~ tyce, it was amazing.

I feel Tyce is sort of in on the joke, and plays up being a diva. He's definitely a character and a half.

I am wondering if having just a top 10 means there will be no cannon fodder this year (The eventual top 10 from each previous season has been pretty awesome, save for a couple dancers.)

dang son, i missed all of last season but from 2 eps i've seen this year i am like, misty-eyed ALL the time. maybe i am hormonal; maybe i just really missed this show?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLAxuwYtnqY

I have no music editing skillz, so that's just an approximation.

- "all-stars" thing basically sux
- d-d-damn is this show just ws central
- i wonder if competing dance type shows have drawn a lot of the non-contemporary talent or what

Qualified disagreement re: all-stars. It will be guaranteed awesome for ballroom routines; good to great for contemporary; crap shoot for hip hop.

This is why I was willing to stake my ilxorihood over dancers in the fitness chicks thread.

Some ppl are convinced that SYTYCD has zero credibility in the hip-hop community because HH is treated as a second-class genre on the show (to a lesser extent, ballroom) -- I agree definitely with the latter, but have no clue about the former.

I think the all-stars thing will be basically okay. By the end of the season, however, we'll all be sick of the "contestant outshone the all-star" formula in judges' comments.

Some ppl are convinced that SYTYCD has zero credibility in the hip-hop community because HH is treated as a second-class genre on the show (to a lesser extent, ballroom) -- I agree definitely with the latter, but have no clue about the former.

i wondered abt this. it does seem like the show privileges ppl w/ a contemp background right from auditions (like how cum ppl who are really good at gymnastics dont have to prove they can "do other styles"???) & was hypothesizing that good dancers might simply be self-selecting - if ur a really good modern dancer this is your show but hip hop/broadway dancers have other, better outlets for competing. like srs professional dancers want to get on this show but then the quality of the bboys and hip hop dancers (and broadway too!) auditioning seems to have markedly declined since the 1st few seasons.

One bone to pick -- hip-hop dancers are serious professional dancers too! I mean, the privileging of contemporary happens in everyday language.

Anyway, it's genuinely hard to tell the level of auditioners, since this time around all we saw were contemporary kids. Maybe that's because ballroomers/HHers have gotten the message and have become lukewarm about the show, or maybe they're still there but the producers simply aren't broadcasting them.

I'm :\ about saying that the quality of HHers/b-boys has diminished lately -- among the girls, mos def, the show's basically given up on the idea of a female HH specialist since Comfort -- but Legacy is from what I can tell a BFD in the b-boying world, and the krumper who won last year is kind of a prodigious talent IMO, and their inter-style versatility (not to mention confidence!) seems to be a lot better too. (The new kid, Full Deck, doesn't look too bad at b-boying, either, at least judging from the little bit we've seen.)

\o_O / about the Broadway dancer comment? Like, there've been two straight-up musical theater kids in the history of the show?

well i found it a little awkward when cat asked kent about being single... and then asked him what his perfect ~woman~ is like. awfully presumptuous, cat!!

I didn't think of it as presumptuous because I feel like the cast really knows each other. Cat wasn't asking for her own knowledge but on behalf of the fans. She knows better than to ask BB about a girlfriend, I'm sure.

Cat is at her best in the audition season. Even if some of it is just playing for the camera, she really comes across as genuinely caring about everyone in the early interviews.

This top 10 this season is looking pretty damn awesome. Good to see Billy and Alex finally and making it, and I'm really liking Melinda so far. And certainly no complaints about seeing Pasha/Anya again. Daaaaamn.

Aw, poor Alex :-(

OK, this has little to do with anything but:

lol, googling "racist dance music" just brings up Das Racist and Mia Michaels

― How could you forget the crazy hooker? (HI DERE), Friday, August 13

lollll

Just for posterity, I'd like to chime in and say season 7 was really awesome despite the injuries. Can we please keep Kathryn, Allison, and Pasha around for a long time?

i liked the all star thing! i think it made the dances better.

Allison is a total force of nature

I need to confine my SYTYCD talk here and not other places.

I think having the all-stars also inspired the choreographers, and made them less apt to water down or hold back in their genres.

the all-stars thing was a fantastic idea, hope they keep it going.

Bumping this only to complain about the show calling referring to Oakland as "San Francisco."

Lil C: "When it comes to Sonya…S is for synergy. O is for obstacles. N is for never. Y is for YES. A is for abstract. You guys are the epitome of Sonya."

Lil C is a complete weirdo, he tries way too hard. Mary was annoying on thursday too. The group looks good tho, plenty of hip hoppers which is always welcome. I like how they formatted the show, making Vegas week go fast and the final cuts less of a big deal, just get em dancing like they did.

I thought the dancing was pretty uniformly awesome, although that should be expected on a "Meet the Top 20" night.

For however weird Lil C is, I think he's a necessary presence on the show. Much prefer his commentary than the fluffy compliments and gushing others seem to give.

Yah I actually like Lil C, he just needs to tame the "hey I know big words" schtick a little. Great dancer too. All the judges have their place and I really like the rotating cast of characters angle, its one of the reasons I like SYTYCD. That ballroom girl is fantastic btw, her legs look like they're chiseled from stone.

Michael, I wish I were as optimistic as you, I haven't seen a mind-blowing routine on the show in quite a while (and I'm including Alex's hip hop w/ Twitch). Can you teach me to be more sanguine?

I'm also slightly wary about the style imbalance with the girls, and how it codes contemporary as female and hip hop as male.

That tap routine was INSANE

Lee, I wish I could.

Also, this show is on Hulu now, which is really helpful for me since I no longer have a DVR or many Wednesdays free.

I liked the fact that Travis used Passion Pit as his music more than I liked his routine

I was amused how many people used dubstep for their audition music. It certainly makes sense for the pop-and-lock dancers.

haha yeah, after the first audition I pointed it out as an example to my wife (we'd had a conversation about it before where I'd tried to describe it unsuccessfully, I think re: the breakdown in "Hold It Against Me") and during all the subsequent auditions she was all "... wow dubstep is really popular, huh"

ha, had that same discussion with my wife too.

https://sites.google.com/site/pnauert/sytycd8.jpg

First injury of the season: Mitchell is sidelined this week with shoulder trouble.

Can anyone view this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVIMFM1l_gE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZNac8CuDd8

Melanie + Marko are pretty amazing so far.

imo Sasha pwnz.

Sasha and Jess are killing it, and are totally overshadowing their partners.

The ballroom routines seem better than usual so far. The Caitlyn/Mitchell samba was fiiiire.