ACTUALLY, NO, I'M PRETTY SURE THAT RIGHT NOW I CAN'T DANCE: So far this season, we've seen the following dances: contestant-all-star; contestant-contestant; contestant-alumnus; contestant-choreographer's assistant; all-star-all-star; group dance with all-stars; group dance without all-stars; contestant solo. I'm putting my money on seeing contestant-judge, all-star-assistant, and alumnus-homeless person in the next few weeks.
I wasn't wild about last night's episode. I always think that asking choreographers to double up their work leads to half the interesting stuff per dance, with the possible exception of Dave C. Scott. Are the choreographers paid by episode or by piece, do you think? In any event, I think I'd rank them like this, from top to bottom:
The cream:
Lauren: I still have an almost physical aversion to her personality, and I hate the way her attention-hogging comes right through in her melodramatic dancing. In terms of pure competence, though, she was way ahead of the field this week. In an episode where almost everybody seemed just to not get something, she was the exception.
The 2%:
Ashley: Didn't make a wrong step this week, although she still leaves me cold. I actually thought she out-danced Derek, though it was hard to tell because of the dumb harem pants they made her wear. Is it physically possible for one's crotch to be below one's knees? I don't understand how the wardrobe department after all these years still doesn't get that it's critically important that we be able to see a dancer's legs. And even though I gather the pants were not actually restrictive, they sure looked that way.
AdeChike: Yes, I noticed him bobbing his head and going soft and bouncy when he should have been striking poses for a stretch of the middle of the Bollywood thing (you could see on his face afterward that he was not happy with it). But he did that piece right at the beginning and (especially) the end, and I thought that his dance with Courtney continued to let him show both personality and technique. And I appreciate that Cat called out the judges for their double standard vis. Jose. Mia's defense ("but we like Jose better!") wasn't exactly stirring.
Billy: This was the first week when I really understood the judges' criticism that Billy doesn't partner well. I'm not going to blame him for not partnering well with Jose for about a hundred reasons having more to do with Jose, but there was no reason why he couldn't have been more in step with Katee. I mean literally -- particularly at the end of the Cats dance, the two were way off both in their timing and in their angles.
Kent: His dance with Lauren was just fine. He seemed more poised and mature in it than I've seen in any of his other work. His hip-hop was as infuriatingly mediocre as it could have gotten. That is, it was expertly stepped without any feel for the style at all. It was not really hip hop -- he was a dead ringer for Matthew Morrison or a '90s boy-band member who learned about funk from an aging pedophile in Orlando. It was kind of the inverse of Nigel's criticism of Robert's quick-step -- Kent maintained his center of gravity at exactly the same spot above the stage throughout the performance. He didn't dip, weave, bob, or anything, which I think is essential in hip hop. There is something singularly unappealing about soulless hip hop.
The skim:
Robert: I understand why they wanted to give him the tongue bath this week -- he really is an excellent, likeable dancer. But it was very strange that they did not mention that he missed a lift and, in a rush to catch up, basically flipped Kathryn on her ass. In my book, if you drop Kathryn, you immediately go to the bottom two. DO NOT BREAK THE KATHRYN.
Jose: I do not get why the judges liked his contemporary. For men on this show, contemporary is when you get to soar. You go airborne, you show some extension, you kick, you make weird impossible lines. The other part of your job in contemporary is throwing the woman and snatching her out of thin air as if she's weightless. Because he can't, Jose didn't jump, didn't kick, didn't extend, and didn't make lines. He also only did low lifts, things where he could brace himself against his hips. I suspect he's not strong enough to do the kind of above-the-head lifts that look so gorgeous on this show. So, again, choreo gives Jose an out. And his African dance was just blah, too upright (though I was way confused by Nigel saying that this was closer to his comfort zone than to Billy's, as if African jazz were just this close to street breakdancing). I really wanted to put Robert in the bottom for dropping Kathryn, but regrettably, Jose wouldn't let me.
The lactose intolerance:
Alex is a beautiful dancer. A ruptured achilles tendon is a horrible injury for an athlete. I hope he dances again as well as he did before. I will miss his dancing on this show. And I hope he takes the time off to let the puffiness of his face heal. He looks like he has been crying for several weeks straight, and that's because he has. He cries when they tell him he's great, when they tell him he has work to do, when they ask him why he dances, when they recite the rules for elimination. I will venture the theory that his achilles tendon ruptured from extreme dehydration from all the unnecessary crying.
I am so disapointed about Alex. I love crybaby ballet boys!
ReplyDeleteHate the cutesiness of Lauren and Kent. I had to look up Ashley and Robert's names, they are so boring I keep forgetting them. I like Jose but he is clearly in over his head. I am still holding that Vegas tap dance against Adechike. The only one left to hold my interest is Billy... and the judges seem to beat him up every week for being unable to connect to his female partners, which although true, is imo less important then Jose's complete lack of ability which gets a pass every week.
Not a fan of this season. Alex was the one bright spot.
I've been trying for a couple of seasons to figure out how to articulate a certain kind of double standard that seems to happen on this show WRT dancers of color who are breakers or hip hoppers and the contemporary white boys. Billy does a terrible krump and gets derided and laughed at. Jose does a lame contemporary and they praise him for his courage in dancing out of his style. It's, like, if you're white and have to dance a stereotypically "non-white" dance (hip-hop, Krump, Bollywood, etc.) and do poorly, you're criticized and/or ridiculed. If you're non-white and have to dance a typically "white" dance (anything ballroom, arguably Broadway, some contemporary), you're given the "How courageous" pass (and sometimes the comments even read as "How cute" like you'd praise a child). I started noticing it a couple of seasons ago and have really started pricking my ears up for it this year. Nigel is the worst for it, but Mia's not innocent, either. It's insulting to all the dancers, frankly.
ReplyDeleteTotally disagree about the white/black thing here. I think it is more street dancer/technical dancer bias. Adechike is black and yet he gets lambasted for everything he does...
ReplyDeleteYes Watts. There is an "extra credit" that the hip-hop / b-boys get. They seem to get an "A" for effort that is not afforded to any other type of dancers dancing out of their element.
ReplyDeleteI always thought that it must have something to do with the percieved difference in training. It is really on the verge of condescending with Jose this year. They never tell him how to improve. Repeating that he "tries" hard and has a cute smile is not going to make him a better dancer. I almost feel bad for him in that respect.
I want to add that I do not think it is a racial issue.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I said "dancers of color who are breakers or hip hoppers" Contermporary dancers of color don't seem to get the same treatment (Ade, Adechike, Danny, etc.). You're right, they criticize Adechike in much the same way they have Billy this season.
ReplyDeleteAnd I didn't say black, because that's more specific than "of color" or "non-Caucasian" and I'm also not sure of Jose's ethnicity.
<span><span>Yeah, that's what it is, that whiff of almost-condescension. It's in the same vein as Johnson's famous quote: "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all."</span></span><span></span>
ReplyDeleteThere have been some nonwhite hip-hoppers on the show who were criticized for the weakness of their contemporary or ballroom work. There was a guy on either the second or third season who was an amazing breakdancer, but Nigel just hated him and ripped him a new one every week. I think both Hok and Derek got savaged at times, even though one of Hok's contemporary pieces -- built to feature his strengths and hide his weaknesses -- won an Emmy. And they treated the white hip hopper (Gev) as condescendingly ("bravo!" "outside your comfort zone!") when he danced contemporary and disco. Some (maybe not all) of what you're seeing is probably coincidence, too -- it's just a fact that Joshua and Legacy were much better at contemporary (and Brandon and Will were much better at hip hop) than Billy Bell was at hip hop. It is not true that white people cannot do hip hop. It is absolutely true that Billy Bell cannot do hip hop.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm just trying to think back to the last time there was a breaker/krumper/hip hopper that was not a minority. Ivan in Season 2? So that part's most likely just (unfortunate) coincidence.
ReplyDeleteWeird thing is that Comfort didn't seem to get the "Look at the cute hip hop dancer dancing outside her style" pass.
Gev was a b-boy, season four, white unless you're like my wife and make a distinction between white and Jewish.
ReplyDeleteLegacy.
ReplyDeleteSarah, Season 3.
ReplyDeleteI think the other reason they have the "double standard" is the idea that contemp dancers are supposed to be more trained and with more technique, and thus better able to pick up new styles rapidly. Whereas hip-hop dancers (especially the ones on the show) play up the "learned on the streets" and downplay classes or technique training, suggesting that it would be tough for them to pick up stuff outside their own style. There's an attitude that (whether true or not), the core technique training of a classically trained contemp dancer should allow faster pick-up and easier learning. And yeah, the judges did a 180 on Hok about 1/3 of the way through his season, and went from praising every single thing he did to regularly trashing his lack of finish.
ReplyDeleteWhat's also kind of interesting is how marginalized ballroom has become over the last 3 seasons. Fewer and fewer ballroom dancers, fewer and fewer routines.
I’ve noticed and been bothered by the different treatment of hip-hoppers and contemporary dancers since Season Two’s Ivan got the same kind of judging that Jose’s getting now.
ReplyDeleteI distinctly remember Nigel expressing the same amazement that a hip hop dancer was pointing his toes and Mia talking about how Ivan’s purity and heart overcome his lack of technique. Given that Ivan was a boyish and gangly Russian immigrant, I’m positive the disparate treatment of hip-hoppers doesn’t have anything to do with race. (I’d also mention that from recently re-watching Ivan and Allison’s contemporary piece to Annie Lennox’s "Why," Ivan was much, much better at contemporary than Jose, although now that I think of it, "Why" had even fewer lifts than Jose’s piece).
I agree 100% that much of the reason for this different treatment is the supposed lack of training of most of the hip-hop dancers on the show as compared to the contemporary ones (I say supposed because some of the dancers pegged as hip-hoppers like Russell the Krumper seemed to have a suspicious familiarity with ballet positions). I also agree that this comes across as profoundly condescending, both to the individual dancers and to hip-hop dancing generally.
What’s even more disturbing to me is that all of the dancers I can recall who’ve been treated this way are young, like Jose and Ivan, and I can’t recall this type of treatment being given to older hip-hop dancers like Comfort and Twitch. That makes the behavior smack, not just of condescension, but of infantalization in a awww-isn’t-he-precious kind of way.
My guess is that that's in part because there's another show that is nothing but ballroom, in part because the ballroom dancers have as hard a time with the other styles as do the hip-hoppers, and in part because ballroom is boooooooooorrrrrrrrrriiiiiinzzzzzzzzz.
ReplyDeleteCould not for the life of me remember her name or if I had just imagined her. Wonder what she's doing now.
ReplyDeleteOh, god, this show is endlessly condescending. I want to vomit every time they have somebody with any kind of physical limitation or rough backstory or even mild difference in auditions. You have muscular dystrophy? You're brave. You're poor? Brave. Plus-sized? Brave. Facial paralysis? Brave. You know, even if it's true, the best way to convey that point is just to let the story tell itself. If something is inspiring, people will be inspired. They won't have to be told to be inspired.
ReplyDeleteOh my God, yes to this. (Though you forgot "have a mobster for a father?"). I also can't stand the variation of brave, which is the tears and "you are why we dance" inspiration dreck.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely right and well said. I had to stop watching the audition shows. Between the unctious condescention to the "brave" ones and the sneering condescention to the deluded ones, I started hating the show.
ReplyDeleteThe show has started taking itself WAY too seriously, and a corresponding rise- skyrocket, even- in the level of pretentiousness and patronizing commentary has caused me to only manage to watch if it's on DVR. I fast-forward through everyone but Adam's comments and even he's beginning to fail me.
ReplyDeleteMary held Nigel in check, in my opinion... when she was there, things had a level of unpredictability that prevented the show from getting so. very. earnest and faux-deep. Lighten up, it's just dancing. Thank God Cat manages to still keep it bubbly. I detest Mia's preaching and Nigel's attempts to appear knowledgeable. His head is so far up his own ass it's ridiculous.