KNEW EVERY STEP RIGHT OFF THE BAT, SAID "I CAN DO THAT": So with six dancers remaining and only one episode to go, So You Think You Can Dance is getting down to the nitty gritty -- four people who actually can dance and two who, while they certainly can dance better than the vast majority of the population, are outclassed by the top four.
On Wednesday, we saw the trouble with the couples-facing-elimination concept. Ashle and Melissa had fallen into the bottom two rather than the seriously inferior Kamilah because Kamilah had had the good fortune to be paired with Nick, who the judges (correctly) believe to be uneliminatable. So Melissa danced her last while Kamilah and her monumentally over-dramatic outpourings made it to the final six.
As for the guys, I was actually kind of surprised by the outcome: Jamile had made it through several weeks on the hot seat by virtue of being up against guys whose time was at least arguably due (Allen and Ryan, for example). Obviously Jamile's got a solid fan base, but I had thought that Artem's general smoothness and constantly exposed chest (still love the crack Nigel made about how Ashle was the only person who'd exposed more skin than Artem) might galvanize the teenybopper fan base into action. But Jamile's fans are apparently plentiful, and thus Artem is off to the gulag.
Which left us with six:
Jamile and Kamilah: This wasn't a lucky draw for either of them: the worst remaining guy and the worst remaining girl. Both dancers are the worst remaining of their gender. They did luck out on their dance selections, I thought, drawing hip hop and American jive -- incidentally, are there other versions of jive that I'm not aware of? Like Guatemalan jive? -- but neither performance was particularly impressive. Neither of these two deserves to make it to the final four.
Blake and Ashle: It's killing me (and Blake as well, apparently) that Blake hasn't drawn hip hop from the hopper yet. Smooth waltz and Argentine tango were at least a change from week after week of Blake Doing His Lyrical Thing. I think Blake is a brilliant dancer, but these two dances didn't really move me. And I'm never moved by Ashle -- she's technically fabulous, but I never get a sense of emotion from her.
Nick and Melody: What a lucky break for these two, drawing each other as partners and then drawing Broadway and disco as their dances. I myself did a little (wildly uncoordinated) happy dance in my living room when I heard the opening thumps of All That Jazz and realized that we were going to see Melody and the Leg doing some Fosse. Nick, of course, is a chameleon who can dance anything except the quickstep, so there was no doubt in my mind that this was going to be fantastic. And it was. Their disco routine was vibrant and fun as well. If these two don't sail into the final four, I'll be quite annoyed.
So the composition of the final four seems pretty obvious to me, but what next? Seems to me that the final two ought to be Blake and Nick, and we've certainly had foreshadowing of a Blake/Nick danceoff, but it's anyone's guess as to what Nigel has in mind. I'd like to see the final four be asked to dance the same dance styles -- and the same choreography, to boot -- so that we're actually comparing apples to apples.
(Between Dancing with the Stars and SYTYCD, I suddenly know a whole lot more about various dances than I did a mere few months ago. Who knew that America would learn the difference between a samba and a rhumba, not to mention the facial expressions required for an effective paso doble?)
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