ElleTwoThree

Finally saw it... I did not remember 17 of those people, honestly I have the memory of a garden gnome, the only ones I remembered were the muggy Florida boys and that blond girl. I mean after a few seconds I kinda placed most of them (though not Emily, Jacque, Teddy... possibly more) but if I walked into one of them in the streets I would never know them. Anyhow to the dancing, the routine I liked the best was muggy boy number 2 and Tanisha (sp?) right at the end. I thought that was energetic and enjoyable and enjoyed (they enjoyed dancing it). I know very little about ballroom, but it looked right to me. I was ready to hate them, but I liked them which is probably the best compliment one could ever give when watching this show. Also the mormons on this show have come a ways since Benji felt awkward touching Donyelle's bum, huh? This girl did not feel awkward touching (and kissing) away! The contempos... none of them touched my soul. "Addiction" touched my soul, these were ok. I particularly did not love the Ricky one as I found it kinda snoozy. Extension extension extension sloooooooow cartwheel, HMV, HMS HMV extension extension. I will say their pirouettes were perfect and not lopsided or fally outy. I think out of all of them I liked the one with Casey the best though as said none of them really moved me. The tap was fun, the other ballroom was fun-ish though I thought she was a bit cold, her body rolls were far away from his torso (isn't that the whole point? To roll into his chest?) and she just didn't look in it as much. The "hiphop" was fun too. None of them gave me goosebumps though (none of the choreos). The ballet... I had obviously read on here all the hate and expected it to be godawful. But it was ok. Not great, but I had such low expectations that I was almost pleased with it (unlike the choreographer who looked like he'd rather be sticking chillis in his eyes than watching that). What I hated most was one of the girls' voice. And the fact that they look very similar, and therefore I couldn't tell who was who almost ever (even during the 8 seconds). Dancing one was clearly stronger than the other (they both fell out of their pirouettes but they were en pointe, so I am cutting them some slack). Stacey Tookey is my dream woman.

As a ballerina who auditioned for this show I don't think you are completely wrong or unfair. But also not completely right, I'd say. I personally was never ABC or RBC material (I am way too lazy for that!) but was good enough to get into a good dance program at a well enough known school with a well known associated company, so I was on my way to be a company dancer. I am not crazy good though, so the chances of me being a prima were always slim. Maybe if I worked my ass off and really lived and breathed ballet the way a lot of my classmates did, I could have, never say never, but I found that life a bit... monotonous. So like a lot of people in my school I dabbled in other stuff, started to take more contemporary/modern dance than was originally on my plan, etc... losing focus on ballet also meant diminishing my chances at a company place. Which at 19 sounded fine. Dance is such a random bag, I mean nobody guarantees a job in anything, but I wanted less of the stuffy ballet and more fun (which in my mind was a Broadway show for example). I auditioned in that phase basically (a few years on, but yeah... that phase), wanting more from dance but not knowing where to go with it. I wasn't expecting to get in, I just wanted the experience of such a big production (and in retrospect I wanted some validation which you do get if you are an ok dancer, as each passed stage makes you feel "worthy" as a dancer). I think ballet is a tough field to stick to, even when you are good, because it is rigid. I remember Alex Wong's interview and he was saying exactly that. He was dancing for some good company (Florida?) at the time, but he wanted more. I think Danny, Chehon - they must have felt similar. And I don't think they are bad or mediocre even, I think they are accomplished dancers. How good was I when I auditioned? I don't know. Probably in my dance prime as I was receiving so many lessons, was still doing a lot of pointe work (which I gave up at some point) and was dancing all day every day. Was I great when measured to someone who was dancing at a good company level? Probably not. However I did get steady dance jobs for years after that audition, which means I cannot have been that bad. So in essence, yes, the ballerinas on this show are probably not girls destined to be primas at world renowned companies, but don't necessarily have to be the black sheep of the ballet world! Disclaimer: I haven't seen the episode yet, justwanted to put my 2 cents in.

I hope it is ok that I opened this new thread, I just wanted us to have somewhere to talk about SYTYCD in other countries. I am very much loving the Australian format (I am a few months behind and am spoiled as to who wins, but that doesn't bother me), is anyone else watching it, has anyone else watched? Any other countries? I am always open to watch more of this show (and in fact most of the non US ones have really impressed me).

I was always a huge fan of SYTYCD Australia but had not seen the revamped season this year and just started yesterday and it is funny... they have all the things we (and by we I mean mainly me) whine about here covered. They have a multicultural cast, they have dancers that go up to (gasp) age 34 (or at least that is the oldest I have seen in the audition round so far! And lots are mid to end 20ies), they mention their same sex partners and - imagine- the judges are ok with it. Oh and other than one girl whose mother had an accident (but was still alive) all the talking heads were about what they study, how they grew up, what their parents do, the kids they teach... nobody has mentioned a dead family member, pet or neighbour yet!! Plus the first episode just whittled it down from 100 and was a lot more dance focussed. So I would recommend it highly! Re: Bridget, they always cast at least one person that I always think is kind of not that great and quite clearly not as great as some of the others who got cut. Sometimes that person goes on to be amazing (and often that person gets pushed through by Nigel for weeks with a very limited fanbase and then is out). Not really being able to remember many of the other girls yet, I do have a feeling Bridget might be that person for me this year. Funnily most of the people I did not love when I see them in other bodies of work or as an all-star I start liking them. Jenna I did not like at all but quite enjoyed her partnering "funny fringe" (can't remember his name), I was not a FikShun fan at all and I am quite pleased seeing his muggy muggy face now and Melanie always kind of annoyed me a little and yet I got so very happy seeing her Peter Panning at the Tonys.

My very favourite routines tied for first are these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKn4wIa9HQ8 and Both are Imogen Heap which is so the opposite of what I usually like but the quality of movement in these two routines just captivates me. I had this project when I was studying which was "choreograph for a deaf person" so basically make someone "see music" and these two dances make me see music.

Mia is totally hit or miss for me, some of her routines are among my favourites (particularly group routines, the Alice in Wonderland one comes to mind), some are my very least favourite (with the dead daddy dance being the worst routine I ever saw in SYTYCD... the most cringeworthy routines about dead children that that obese monster from Dance Moms produces is poetry next to the DDD). Her tough act... I don't mind so much. I had tough teachers through my dance career, very eccentric selfobsessed and selfimportant teachers and choreographers. You learn to live with it. When I was accepted into a pretty good school leading to a pretty good company one of my teachers actually said "they must have liked your face, because your dancing is nothing special". The dance world is at times cruel. Sonya... I don't love her choreo on the show as I find it very similar (which is normal a lot of choreographers stick with 12 custom moves) and she doesn't stray from her "style" ever. I worked with her once and she is very good as a teacher though. She knows what she wants in a choreo emotionally and she prioritises that, which is nice. She'd rather you changed a step if it went with you feeling the right emotion than to stick to her step. I can't dance pole (I have noodly arms!) but I have a friend (male) who is the best pole dancer I have ever seen. What he does on a pole is poetry in motion and I I have huge respect for pole dancers, I find it one of the most demanding styles to dance correctly as it requires not just flexibility, musicality and control but crazy strength. Kudos to all of you! I didn't realise that the cast was not diverse this year, but that sucks. The dance world is pretty inclusive (most of the time) and this show casting all white, all "straight" people kind of takes that away a bit. Misrepresents. I quite liked Benji's podcast about being gay and the show, as a gay person myself I really hate Nigel's obsession with the cis-male man and his complete and utter disregard for the gays (there are less lesbian dancers I feel like, as dance draws in gay males moreso than gay girls, though I have never struggled to find other lesbian girls to date in my dance schools either), never a mention of a same sex partner (but plenty of mentions of girlsfriends and wives for the dudes and boyfriends for the gals). All of the choreos are love stories between two straight people, if two boys dance together they are in bullfights or friends or some other bullshit. When two girls dance together they are foxes or housewives. This is 2014, let's get real. Some people are gay, get over it. It doesn't have to be pushed down people's throats but a casual mention of someone's partner or when two boys dance together for it to be a happy love story... that is not really asking for that much, is it? OK, I am off my soap box. I just wish as a kid that I could have seen two beautiful girls dancing in love on TV and thought "that will be me one day" instead of always seeing hetero couples and thinking "I don't fit in".

Yeah, I am not a fan of blond ballroom girl either but did like the split second we saw of a couple of girls we magically never saw pre green mile (one does ballet, the other one contemporary I believe). I agree that she looks fake and her dancing hasn't impressed me either so far. The tap dancer looks fun, he kind of reminds me a little of Benji Schwimmer with his funny face and all (but again is so young... I actually went on wikipedia to see if I was just being ageist but 8 out of ten boys are 20 and under with most of them being 18, and 8 out of 10 girls are 21 and under. That is ridiculous! Are all the other dancers 20 and over employed? Where are they??).

I don't know about femininity, there is a certain beauty in feminine male dancers I believe, I just find that his dancing is very immature. I can see that he has wonderful flexibility, his musicality is not bad either, but to me (important, YMMV!) there is nothing behind it, it is 1-2-3-4, 2-2-3-4 without the feeling behind it. Which is normal because he is 18 and probably a competition dancer (which means he has done 50 routines that all look very much the same in fairly quick succession). And I agree, I thought Billy Bell (couldn't remember his last name) when I first saw him and I can see the Jakob Karr comparison too. And both left me cold too (though I warmed to Karr right at the very very very end) for similar reasons. And I think it also bothered me that they showed him do a 3 minute routine and then did not show anybody else's final solo, but that is not at all up to him and I shouldn't blame him for it. But let's wait, he might blow us away in other styles (or he might have everything catered to him as he is clearly a favourite), it is not really fair to make a judgement call this early on. I admit, I don't own a TV so I watched it all in assorted youtube clips and missed out the whole intro. Was Tara Lipinski the woman whose head was 4 times too big for her body? Since none of the judges give constructive criticism anyway, I don't mind the random guest judge. They are not going to make a difference. Back in the day when people like Wade would guest judge, the criticism helped improve the dancing, but in the last few years it is just "you are amazing" "you let me down" and "wow, your growth is astonishing" (as well as "AHHH BLABLABLA TRAIN!"). I think they should have choreographers guest judge, ideally those who have worked with them (so each week one choreographer should sit out from doing choreos and judge instead, or the group choreographer should judge), that way they would be able to actually tell the dancers something rather than just "guide the audience" (which is what they do right now). In my rant yesterday I forgot my main rant I had while watching: why the hell do they do the dance for your life bit? It is clearly just to showcase certain dancers better (but Jaja for example didn't even make it through, so all that showcasing led to nowhere) because obviously they were amazing in their own style otherwise they wouldn't be there (plus they watched them in their own style like 3 days ago when they arrived and if they are really looking to see if their own style was great, they could look at recordings (from 3 days ago!!) rather than have them do another dance that will look identical to that one). The problem is not in her own style, it is in other styles, why watch Jaja krump again? We know she can krump! The issue is she can't chacha or whatever (I can't remember which dance she got "dance for your life"d for, I know it wasn't ballroom, chacha is just a stand-in for whatever it was). I wanted Jaja to go through because I love me a female hiphopper (Sara!) but it was blatant that she was not nailing the other styles (except for the ballroom, that was unexpectedly amazing), I thought what we saw of her in contempo (or jazz) looked anything but graceful. Which is fine, none of the b-boys look graceful or point their toes and they (often) make great additions to the show, but there is no point in seeing them b-boy in exchange for a bad round of choreo. Instead they could just accept it, remember (because it was 3 days ago!) that they loved them in their own style and give them a pass without the whole "dance for your life" charade.

Not!gas is always both my favourite and least favourite episode all rolled into one. I like it because it is more dance centric than most of the other ones, particularly this one had a lot less talktalktalk and a lot more dance in it. Plus we get several choreographies, we get to actually see them dance and not tell us about their dance quite as much. It is my least favourite in that it is one of the most manipulative of all the episodes. It gives time frames that are just not correct ("they have to learn this choreo in an hour!") , it talks about people dancing through the night which I am sure nobody does (everybody knows that you will injure yourself if you dance for 40 hours straight), it cuts and pastes like crazy to make it all look So. Darn. Dramatic. Plus it has the stupid "group choreo" shenanigans. I hate that round because this is not "so you can choreograph a random set of dancers you have met 12 minutes ago who all have difficult personalities"... (I may also hate it because I got cut at that stage winkwink). It doesn't show you if people can work together well necessarily, but if you have 2 crazy pushy people in your group (or 4 or all 5) and everyone wants to shove their ideas in the pot then you have a hodgepodge of crummy choreo danced by people who kind of dislike each other at that point. Enough of a general rant, let's rant more specifically: I am not as in love with Ricky as everybody else is. I think he is ok, a good enough dancer, but he is so young and he dances immaturely. Most of them are crazy young. The couple (I mean "best friends") from Miami both look 8 too, Casey, who I very much enjoy, looks 9. I don't quite understand why they refuse to cast more grown up men. I think 6 or 7 seasons back you'd have the occasional Travis Wall baby, but most of the others looked like they had at least finished high school. The girls are young too though. A few years back I remember thinking "aww Molleeeee and Nathan are like 10 years younger than everybody else", they would be like the grown ups in this group of people. That said I don't actively dislike anybody yet, if they stop talking about their deceased relatives now that they have made it to top 20 that would be great though. And I found the blond hairography girl so much better at this callback than at her original audition. I think she could go Lauren Froderman, she needs to play her cards right though. I have no faves yet as those I loved the most are gone byebye (but so are those I liked least, so... you win some you lose some, right? Loved seeing Anya and Dmitry... I would have just watched that for 2 hours. Someone up there said that as a straight woman she loved Anya, as a gay one I find her amazing too. And Mackenzie (total crush on her too!). And I have a soft spot for Travis, that blond lispy little weirdo. Seeing all of them kind of detracted from the actual contestants a little though. Finally tats: the royal ballet company won't hire you with visible ones, but modern dance companies I don't think would mind them. Beautiful tats drawn in nice places on gorgeous dancers I think are really sexy. However sleeves, massive tribals and tramp stamps not so much! Which is silly because tats are a form of expression and dance is a form of expression and why should there be rules (this is what I told my mum when I got mine... she was not impressed).

When I was growing up this was a big thing... or maybe it was a big thing because our lives were rather small. I have a very classical training, my mother is foreign and in her mind only "real" ballet would do for her daughters. I was one of those kids you would pity who had to schedule friends in with like a month notice in first grade. I took other styles because they were "required" so we had tap, jazz and modern on the side but all of it was rather dry and strict (think dress code and french lady with a stick teaching). Other girls in our neighbourhood and school went to the "fun" dance studio where you got to do lots of acro and compete and dance to the tunes that were in and some of them would go on to cheer. We (my teachers, my classmates and my mother in particular) looked down upon these girls a lot. They were not being "taught properly", they "threw their jumps", they were "stretched to be flexible but had no strength in their flexibility", so basically they were taking the "easy route full of prices and trophies" instead of working hard the way we did with absolutely no recognition (which obviously is not true, they work hard as well, really really hard). Nowadays I try to fight it because their goal is obviously very different from people learning where I learned. We were being shaped into company ballerinas, they weren't. Even the contemporary classes I took were heavily ballet based, you took that "ballet perfection" and moulded and freed it. So I try not to judge competition dancers (and yes, most of the people in SYTYCD are competition dancers because they would be more attracted to a program like this as their career in dance can be boosted in a way that no company dancer's would. If you are a company ballerina you are expected to excel at ballet and ballet only, you don't need to be able to nail a chacha or a hiphop in a week!) but I do unwittingly. I prefer classically trained people (Alex Wong and Chehon), I criticise moves I recognize as being "competition"... but I think for a show choreographer such as Friedman to criticise it is a bit idiotic, as those are the kids who will go for this show and these are the kids that will be "cross trained" the way they want them to be.

Yeah you can see Robert dancing with one of the girls who had a forfeiting partner in the penultimate episode. In Vegas if I recall correctly they might ask someone to do it twice (I feel like that has been shown in the past), though I also do think that at Vegas stage they eliminate people in a way that this imbalance shouldn't happen (though due to injuries it might).

No, I did go to Vegas. It seemed like a great experience to have (and it was really interesting). I was quite young and maybe part of me did think getting on the show would be ace, but mostly I did it to get the experience. It is great to do some choreography with some of the choreographers on the show. Yeah, that sounds right, though before that there is a day or two of "improv" so you go and improvise (though most people do choreography) either to a song chosen randomly by the producers or a capella in front of a bunch of people by yourself. If you got past that they interviewed you a little and then you had another improv session (on another day) this time to a song of their choice and as a group (this part I thought was pure faff, my group was like 90% contemporary dancers and 3 hiphoppers and we kept getting in each others way and some girl decided to do a lengthy floor sequence and it was just idiotic, they eliminated a lot of people at that stage). If you got through that you got to do the choreography round. Then what you wrote happened.

Again I was not asked to do it and I didn't sit in the audience or stick around after i was told I was being called back for the vegas part. We had all done choreography and a lot of people had been eliminated (very good people among them, much better than me for reasons nobody understood), you do choreo in a large group and then in smaller groups (like they show, maybe 3-5 couples on stage at a time) and a whole bunch of people sit there and take notes. Some people were excelling at it and others weren't and people got asked to leave independently of that which makes me think that they wrote this down and when you solo'ed if you were good but their note said "not good at choreo" they would have you do choreo again. So they make it look like your solo wasn't strong enough on TV but the reality of it is, they knew you hadn't nailed the choreo so want you to repeat it. Which is why we think "hey that dude was amazing" and they still send them to choreo or the umpteenth girl who does the "reach and stare, HMV and despair" move is sent right through. Another thing they don't show and was a bit of a talking point when I did it was that they turn away a lot of people due to "physical reasons" - so basically heavier set girls and short boys. Those were sent home because they "wouldn't partner well" (even if they partnered just fine in choreo in front of them) and I didn't hear it but in my girlfriend's group apparently a girl was told to lose weight and come back next year, which I thought was unnecessary. We all accepted that because it is a TV show they are looking for a type of people and that at any other audition (for a show, a musical, etc...) you would also be turned down if you don't look the way the producers envision you to look. But obviously that is not how they want to be seen. I always thought Donyelle must have been quite extraordinary to make it through because she was the body type a lot of girls were being turned away for. I am sorry I keep talking about me, I must come across as terribly selfcentred (I might be a little selfcentred... but not usually this bad), I'll stop now!

Everyone who makes it to the jidges got to do choreography when I did it (and by got to, I mean had to). We had a choreo round without the jidges (this is after a couple of days of "improv" and interview faff that filters out the "worthy dancers" from the large amount of people they are not interested in), more whittling it down, then the rest got to do solos in front of the judges (small percentage of the initial auditioners). That was the end for me, I was told that I would advance (and to run and scream with the "ticket" and whatnot) and I left. I don't know if the ones who are sent to choreo actually do another round of choreo... I assume they perform the choreo they had done as a group initially in front of the judges (but don't know if they go over it again). To get the shots of the jidges putting people through at that stage that seems necessary. When I did it no obviously shitty person (like Sex back in the day, remember Sex? He was atrocious!) was there, but I assume those people do not do the choreo, they might be cherry picked on the faff days and asked to come straight to do a terrible solo and be the nation's laughing stock. I can't see how they would make someone do a partner choreo with someone they know is absolutely crap. I obviously only know what happened at my audition and from what I heard others mention in Vegas I'd say that was how it was done that year, but they could have changed that since the show has changed fairly massively since then (I miss the old stage!).

That poster would be me, it is not in his leaps, it is in his pirouettes. And this is very common, so unless you are trained in dance (and maybe slightly overly nitpicky like me) you might not even realise it because most of the people auditioning will have done the same. If you do want to "see it" I would recommend watching how he ends his pirouettes (there is a series of them 3/4s into his audition, and he leans into his right each time and ends the series in a floor move to the right, that is what I mean - it goes well with his choreo stylistically, so maybe it was intended, but most of the time it isn't). Now watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmuQYNO_eRU and look how Jenna holds her pirouette series and how she ends the moves before moving into the next move. Again it might be a stylistic choice but I have seen this with a lot of the people who audition (and compete) on this show (and I see it in my students).