‘So You Think You Can Dance’: Which of the top 12 got on the Vindaloo Express?
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I was told two exciting things this week. 1) I as a Show Tracker am allowed to break free of my third-person shackles and now speak the point of view of the subjective ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ viewer at home. 2) It is my duty to pick my favorites on the show.
Well, No. 1 is easy, especially since there were nuances in the dances Wednesday night that probably looked completely different to the audience at home vs. the audience at the studio. Take Jessica King and Will Wingfield‘s Tice Diorio Garden of Eden contemporary dance. As Mia Michaels said, it was moving body art. But did it elicit the same breathless response at home that it did in the studio? Probably not as much. It was like reading a book and enjoying it OK, but having the sensation that it’s actually got way more meaning than you’re picking up. And the judges didn’t have too many great things to say about Katee Shean and Joshua Allen‘s Viennese waltz, which actually didn’t look too shabby (albeit too spectacular either) at home, but I’m just used to liking everything they do.
No. 2, however, is not so simple. What is simpler is picking out which dancers will be going home next and probably in which order: Jessica, Comfort Fedoke and Thayne Jasperson. As much as Mia adored Jessica and Will’s contemporary routine, she pretty much ate Jessica’s soul for dinner as she addressed their second dance, the quickstep (and even the non-expert at home could tell there wasn’t a lot of actual quickstepping in that routine -- there were gymnastics, and the twist, and photo ops, but not much else.) ‘Will’s so tired of carrying her. And he needs a new partner.’ It would be difficult to top the criticism Jessica has received in previous weeks but it gets harsher and harsher.
Comfort and Thayne meanwhile, can’t get the whole chemistry thing together. Thayne seemed to do OK in their hip-hop routine (did it not seem that when he said he didn’t want to seem like a ‘major white boy’ he was referencing Chris Jarosz‘s krumping from a few weeks ago?) but as the judges said, they themselves didn’t bring much to it. The dance that Mandy Moore choreographed for them was beautiful, entwining, low to the ground with delicate little touches and turns, but Nigel lamented that another couple could have danced it so much better, and it’s not hard to imagine perhaps Twitch Boss and Kherington Payne or Mark Kanemura and Chelsie Hightower doing much more with it. Comfort’s frustration is showing a bit, which is never good.
It’s clear that once these three are eliminated the competition will reach a new level, especially as the couples are separated (I can’t imagine Gev Manoukian dancing without Courtney Galiano, however, and I don’t think he can either). But even from the best couples it’s hard to pick any favorites, especially as this two-dances-a-night format means that it’s anyone’s game. Chelsie and Mark’s Broadway routine was sexy, but they didn’t get the highest marks for the salsa. Twitchington’s krump routine was quasi-buck (it means ‘buckwild,’ people -- we used to say it in high school before krumping was even invented), but Kherington’s sudden energy loss was hard to ignore, even if the judges wanted to.
Only Courtney and Gev, the cutest wee couple in history, pulled out two routines that got the judges’ approval -- Gev seemed in his element, even though it wasn’t his genre, doing the cha-cha (and it was fun seeing him speak Russian with choreographers and last-season dancers Pasha Kovalev and Anya Garnis). Their lost-in-the-jungle jazz routine was only ‘fun’ to Nigel Lythgoe but Mary and Mia both gave it the thumbs up. As Mia said, they’re not the best dancers on the show, necessarily, but their performance quality is always high. And maybe Gev should get extra points for having to dance with a man-purse.
Even though Katee and Joshua didn’t get much love for their waltz, they ended the night on a high note with their Bollywood dance. It was beautiful, it looked difficult and it energized the audience with the music, the performance, the joy of it and the excitement of inserting something new and worldly into the show. The judges sure love Katee -- she and Chelsie may be my female front-runners, but I can’t cheat and pick more than a few favorites just to hedge bets. Once the judges’ most-criticized dancers are eliminated, I’ll be able to really see how the remaining dancers stack up against each other and then I’ll choose, I promise.
-- Claire Zulkey