- Nice lack of subtlety in Nigel calling out Billy Bell: "the doctors said you could have danced, but it was up to you, and you screwed us. Good luck tomorrow night."
- Hey, Kherington! As shiny and happy as I remember her. Her mouth is so big that I think when she smiles she unhinges her jaw.
- I continue to like Robert (whose jazz with Lauren was the best of the night, I thought) and to appreciate Lauren Froderman without actually liking her.
- I did not get the overpraise for Jose, for Kent, or for the Tabitha-Napoleon hip-hop choreo that didn't have more than one second of decent footwork or any cool-looking tricks.
- And what was with the slowness of the pieces? I get that Jose's contemporary had to be slow so that he could keep up, but slow hip hop and slow rhumba? Yaaaaaawn.
- I'm really starting to notice the music supervisor on this show. I don't always like all the music, but it covers an extremely broad range. We've had two Florence + The Machine pieces, and this week we got Jon Brion. Nicely done.
- Kathryn is an elegant dancer. She looks stupid wearing Jodie Foster's Taxi Driver wardrobe. Whoever invented high-waisted shorts needs to lose his or her sewing license. Putting that getup next to Kent (who already skews yokel) in ripped cutoff jeans was a huge mistake. They should have danced the theme to Dogpatch.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
BULLETS OVER BROADWAY ROUTINE: Yeah, I know there was no Broadway routine on last night's So You Think You Can Dance. But I have so few thoughts about last night that I needed to use the bullets anyway:
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Also didn't get the massive praise for Kent's step routine. Twitch stepped circles around him (not surprising), but when watching a replay and focusing on Kent it wasn't so much "grimy / dirty / nasty" (and whatever other terms Mia threw at him)... it was sloppy.
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering if my overall negative reaction to this season is further signs that the "extra" season last fall burned me out a bit on the show. One thing I think they're definitely going overboard with this season is the praising of the choreographers; they spend as much time talking about them as the dancers. Makes me think there's a second show somewhere where the contestants are choreographers rather than dancers, using some common pool of good dancers. It would also allow them more behind-the-scenes and across-time stuff, leaving the actual performance part as only part of the show.
The judges are weirdly overpraising everything this season. I get the impression that Nigel wants to prove that his changes to the show were smart by noting over and over how terrific everything is.... I do not agree.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm enjoying about this season is the high level of most of the dancers/dancing -- due to the all-stars, and a few of the men. And you get better choreography if you have better dancers to work with. I miss having awesome women this season. I miss Alex. I don't much care who wins or in what order they're eliminated; I'm just watching for the moments of brilliance. And I've decided I really don't enjoy reality shows where the audience votes.
ReplyDeleteKent was not impressive in the stepping piece. And Billy was smart not to do it, even if he was cleared by the doctors. The percussiveness of that style really takes its toll on bodies who aren't used to working that way.
A choreography competition would be interesting -- maybe hard to pull off, and with an even more limited and less-knowledgeable audience that SYTYCD. But I'd watch.
I still think the best dancer this season is Allison. (I loved her in Season 2 and think she's only gotten better with a bit of maturity.)
ReplyDeleteThe overpraise of Jose is reaching epic proportions - he's not Gev, he's not Legacy... Mia managed to sound positive even when she called what he did "pedestrian" contemporary.
I wanted to root for Kent as a fellow Ohio-an, but Mia has hit it on the head with him. His facial expressions are distracting. While both he and Robert are too goofy by half in most of their interviews, Robert has been WAY more successful in dropping that when he's actually performing. I thought the stepping was really mismatched (with Twitch "eating Kent alive" as the judges are wont to say) and didn't get any sense of the chemistry between Kent and Twitch that the Nigel was hyping about.
And given what Kathryn had on last night, I don't know how their costume designer won an Emmy. She looked like Elly May Clampett, which is ridiculous given how awesome she is. Also, sewing organza to a Victoria's Secret bra is not a costume (I'm talking about you, Lauren "Misha Chan" Gotleib).
This may be my lack of knowledge about dance showing, but it seemed to me that Robert was weak with the lifts (and other lift-related maneuvers) in his dance with Lauren, which I found fairly jarring. This was also the case in his plastic Ken/Barbie dance a few weeks ago. Is that sort of thing not commented upon by the judges because it's hard to assess which partner is at fault, or because I'm seeing a flub where none exists?
ReplyDeleteI agree that the partnering at the end was very labored. In this case, after I went back and looked at the video again, I think the blame should go more on poor choreographic choices. Robert may also lack upper body strength (there were no lifts in his dance with all-star Lauren, who's a bit bigger than contestant Lauren). But the lifts at the end of the Samba were positioned so that her body weight was hanging off him, usually lower than his center of gravity. They weren't given much in the way of movements that would generate momentum into the positions, and she couldn't help much since she was basically dead weight. This kind of partnering is far more successful when the pairing is a big strong guy with a tiny woman.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Janet, that's really helpful (and interesting).
ReplyDeleteYou know, I did notice that. Robert seemed tired in the second half of his last piece. As Janet points out, he had trouble holding Lauren below his waist. In the very last thing, what I think is called a death spin, he couldn't generate enough rotation to lift her off the ground. What I liked was mainly his jazz, which I thought was the best-danced piece of the night (by both he and all-star Lauren).
ReplyDeleteI'm still missing the old stage. I don't know why, but I feel so much more removed from the dancing/dancers than I did in prior seasons. Is that a combo of stage and direction?
ReplyDeleteI think that the season is really hurting from both the format change and the ill-conceived fall season. My conspiracy theory is that they had to do the all-star thing because they did not have a large enough pool of dancers to fill out an entire top twenty - especially not a top 20 with the diversity that they have had in previous seasons. Nearly every dancer this season is some sort of a contemporary dancer. And the format change elmininated the first five weeks where we saw partners work and grow together. I think it's why we're seeing so many injuries - working with a different partner each week. They also changed the format with the live performance show. They used to film the performance show a day early, which also gave them an extra day to learn the group routine. (it also meant that all of the ridiculous rambling of the judges could be edited down...Mia really benefited from that editing...yikes)
ReplyDeleteI never missed Mary more than when they overpraised that samba where Robert A) almost dropped her; B) could barely do that death-spin lift, and C) they didn't do any sambra rolls! (Did they? I don't think I saw any).
ReplyDelete