`CAUSE A BE-BOP STORK WAS ABOUT TO ARRIVE, MAMA GAVE BIRTH TO THE HAND JIVE: Tomorrow night, So You Think You Can Dance will begin lopping off dancers two by two from the final 16. Something I'm curious about: looking over the dancers' bios, there's a real divide between Those Who Have Been Trained in the Art of the Dance and Those Who Haven't. Example: Melody Lacayanga, when asked if she had any formal dance training, replied "10 years of ballet, 10 years of jazz, 12 years of tap, 6 years of modern, 11 years of lyrical." (She's 22 years old.) Nick Lazzarini's been at it even longer: at the ripe old age of 20, he's got 16 years of jazz, 16 years of ballet, 10 years of tap, 5 years of tumbling, 9 years of lyrical/modern, and 10 years of hip hop. Then you've got Ryan Conferido, the spiky-haired breakdancing wunderkind, who's never had any formal dance training. He says that he began dancing about three years earlier, when "I realized my breakdancing had such a high lack of actual dance. So I started to teach myself to groove better to music, by practicing in the mirror and and getting rid of ugly body movement habits." Most of the finalists seem to have a fair amount of training -- I'm wondering if the ones who haven't been schlepped off to jazz classes since they were three can hold their own.
I'm also wondering (1) whether the five choreographers from the Hollywood round will continue to play an active role throughout the finals or whether we'll be relegated to nothing more than Nigel and the Nigelettes, (2) whether insipid-thus-far host Lauren Sanchez will come up with a better variation on the overly precious "Seacrest out" than last week's " . . . see ya," and (3) whether I will continue to find this show as addictive as I have to date now that we're past the always-interesting Hollywood phase.
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