SHUT UP AND DANCE: Originally I was determined to resist So You Think You Can Dance. But such determination was how I managed to miss out on the first seasons of Survivor, The Amazing Race, and American Idol. So I TiVoed the first episode and figured I'd bedoop bedoop bedoop through it and see if there was anything worth watching.
I am so hooked.
The format, thus far, appears to be classic American Idol -- not surprising, given that the executive producer and chief judge is AI Svengali Nigel Lythgoe. So you've got a few audition episodes around the country that are a mixture of the sublime and the ridiculous, followed by the far more interesting process of winnowing the crop down to the final 16 in Hollywood.
SYTYCD's audition process was significantly more rigorous than AI's. Each auditioner performed a dance of their choosing to the music of their choosing in front of the panel of judges (more on the judges in a moment). If dancers made it past that initial screening, they went on to round two: learning and performing choreography. And those who survived the choreography went into round three, in which they had to learn and perform new choreography with a randomly selected partner, also from the round three audition pool. The top fifty nationwide got to hear the standard AI success mantra -- "you're going to Hollywood!"
What made the auditions interesting was the diversity of dance types. Everything from classical ballet to breakdancing to clogging to primitive jazz to flamenco to bellydancing to some guy on stilts to salsa to all sorts of hip-hop variations, the names of which I have never heard. (I realize that my street cred is fairly non-existent, but a fair amount of attention was paid to the notion of crumping versus popping versus locking and so forth.) It also seems that Britney Spears has become her own genre of dance.
The auditions also revealed the potential tragic flaw of SYTYCD (sadly, that acronym doesn't exactly roll off the tongue) -- the judges. Nigel himself is relatively interesting in a Simon Cowellish sort of way, but the other two have shown zero sign of a personality in four hours of audition coverage. One of them is apparently Nigel's wife, and the other is just some other British guy who has not yet disagreed with anything Nigel has said.
Once the show made its way to Hollywood -- last night was the first of two Hollywood episodes -- things got good. The 50 were divided into groups of 10 to work with five different choreographers, one per day. The choreographers (who, as best I can tell, are highly regarded in their field) represent a range of styles: ballroom, lyrical, salsa, hip hop, and, um, more hip hop. At the end of each day, the judges ranked the dancers in their groups from 10-1. And at the end of the five days, the choreographers got together and cut 24 of the 50 dancers.
The choreographers themselves are alternately snarky and supportive -- exactly what you want to see in judges. The ballroom choreographer, Mary Murphy, has a nice Janice Dickinson streak to her, ordering one contestant to lose his fauxhawk because mohawks just aren't all that Fred Astaire, and bemoaning another contestant's see-through skirt because in ballroom, you don't want to see someone's crotch. Hip hop choreographer #1 Dan Karaty has that Rob Mariano talent for reality TV narration -- his commentary on the two dancers who appear to have faked injuries in order to disguise their lack of ability was a hoot.
Next week we're still in Hollywood, and the 24 will go to 16. As we move into the round of 16, ALOTT5MA will look at the remaining dancers one by one. In the meantime, for anyone who hasn't watched yet, here are a few people to keep your eyes on: Blake, the professional dancer whose already blossoming dance career and cocky-as-all-get-out attitude has the other contestants fuming; Melodie, the lovely lyrical dancer whose inner peace is contagious, Alan a/k/a "Big Poppa," whose size and sunny attitude have the choreographers in conflict; Maricza, the hip hop dance teacher who chose dance over her husband; and any number of others who will be pimped in front of the cameras next week.
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