Wednesday, July 29, 2009

PAGING ME: Well. That was quite a solo. I don't think I've ever seen the single best bit of dancing on a SYTYCD performance show be someone's solo, but darned if Brandon didn't rewhip out the O Fortuna (um, among other things) at precisely the right time to vault himself into frontrunner status. (Then again, I said last week that Janette had soloed herself into a frontrunner slot, and look what happened there.) But really, neither Ade nor Evan did anything to ensure themselves a slot in the final four, so I don't think I'm going out on any kind of a limb here.

Here's exactly what I liked about Brandon's solo. Dancers on this show tend to do one of two kinds of solos: either they vogue in their "own styles" for 30 seconds with a few neat tricks interspersed throughout (Kupono) or they flail about madly trying to jam as much shit into that 30 seconds as they possibly can (Kayla most weeks). Brandon's solo tonight was absolutely jam-packed with actual meaty wow-invoking stuff, but it was also totally tight and controlled, with each move carefully distinct from the ones before and following. Bravo.

And that's kind of it for dancers who really excited me this week. Nigel keeps talking about how no one has shown any real personality yet, but I'm not sure that this gaggle has it in them. Did the judges sandbag during the auditions and Vegas, saving the Twitches, the Gev/Dominics, the Courtneys, and the Katee/Sabras for the inaugural fall SYTYCD season? So let's talk about a few things that I actually found interesting.

First: the interesting choices by the costume and lighting designers for Brandon and Kayla's contemporary dance. Kayla is so blonde and fair that she basically glows on set, so the choice to put her in bright red while stripping off Brandon's white shirt leaving him with dark skin and dark pants and nothing to reflect any light turned the whole thing into a sort of an intensely glorious Me and My Shadow.

And: I liked exactly one of the two Sonya dances. I was surprised by the degree to which Evan hung in there on the fun Willy Wonka dance (he was the one I watched, not Brandon or Ade). In fact, Evan was better doing Sonya than he was doing jazz hands Tyce, which makes precisely zero sense. As for the girls, I'm sure that the superbabe costumes pleased the couple of straight boys in the house, but beyond that it was just kinda dead. This show has never ever figured out how to do a partnered girls dance well. (I think a 3 is much closer to a 2 than it is to a 4 or a 5.) Remember the foxes? And the glorious-girls-with-umbrellas Broadway frippery?

Oh, and then: the eviction notice dance. How did I know it was an eviction notice dance? It's a testament to me and my keen intellect, you see, that I knew it was an eviction notice dance, given that all I had to work with was Tabitha and Napoleon saying it was an eviction notice dance followed by an actual piece of paper used in the eviction notice dance on which was typed in like 50-zillion point font that this was an EVICTION NOTICE dance. Napoleon and Tabitha are by far the the most literal choreographers this show has ever used, and I do hope that Nigel uses them much, much less next season.

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