‘America’s Best Dance Crew’: Kicked out with the martial arts

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

The martial-arts challenge, with a huge assist from Quest crew’s Steve Terada, seemed like it would be a fun and difficult addition to ‘America’s Best Dance Crew’s’ list of difficult challenges. Not just integrating it into a dance routine, but also not having it look corny or too contrived. For possibly the first time this season, the bottom-two battle was awesome. Last week’s Artistry in Motion and Afroborike head-to-head was tough but not like this one. And I don’t know what was with Shane Sparks, but he was extremely critical of almost all of the crews this week, setting a tough tone for the judging. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Afroborike. Like I said last week, they had to give them capoeira, and they did! Definitely wanted to see those dual round kicks, and they did try, but Shane called their routine boring. Martial-arts-wise, he’s right. This performance didn’t really solidify their standing as the crew chose an easy cartwheel as its particular martial-arts movement, so they may again be in the bottom two next week.

We Are Heroes. The group had to incorporate karate into their performance. Complex moves, but when you’re a pop lockin’ crew, complex moves can be broken down. You assumed crews would have faux fights, but there was a cool section with a kick and a back flip that was pretty nice. As Lil Mama said, this ‘crew is so dope it don’t make no sense.’ JC Chasez and Shane said it started slow but, overall, another strong performance.

Massive Monkeys. Still waiting for something spectacular to happen with this crew, but they brought energy. Their challenge was extreme martial arts, and they performed it adequately. There were some cool flips, and the crew paired up well to fight, but as Shane said, there was really only one guy who performed their challenge -- the 540 kick. It was a tough thing to pick, but they did the choosing.

Vogue Evolution. Kung fu’s animalistic movements mixed with freestyling Vogue-ers -- it seemed a good match, but combining the feminine with a masculine fighting style was a challenge. It ended up being cute, but kung fu is not supposed to be cute. JC, after he could regain his voice, said their moves looked like ‘a scratching post’ and that they were sloppy in sections. Shane, still on his roll, said he didn’t ‘like it at all.’

Beat Ya Feet Kings. Tae kwon do. Wow. The way this crew does footwork, it could have been special. It was OK but not memorable. They almost created a new martial art, but that wasn’t the challenge. Shane said that crews need to stop ‘watching YouTube,’ because crews are doing some of the same moves year to year.

Rhythm City. Oh. My. Goodness. JC’s favorite crew is back. Their style was muy Thai, but that almost didn’t matter. First, they came in costumed like the Bride, Gogo and the Crazy 88s from ‘Kill Bill.’ Then, as Shane said, they brought some moves he didn’t expect (double back flips off of one person!) and were extremely precise with some nicely intricate moves.

Southern Movement. Easily the toughest challenge of the night: having to incorporate a stick-fighting style. But they did it and and were great. The dancing itself was the thing that raised their level. These people can dance, whether they throw the hick-hop in there or not, and that was brought to the forefront in this routine. The sticks did not help, though the cool twirling brought a rise from the crowd.

Speaking of the crowd ... they had been giving most of the crews standing ovations all night long, which may have created a false sense of comfort to the crews until the judges laid into them. The only crew that got a standing ovation from both the crowd and the judges was Rhythm City -- and they won the challenge.

Unlike Artistry in Motion’s teary exit last week -- probably one of the saddest in the show’s history -- Southern Movement (which got love from a local paper) went out on a high note both in its performance and, at least on the surface, in its attitude.

Next week: Bollywood. It would seem as if Rhythm City, We Are Heroes and Vogue Evolution are conditioned well for this, but who knows what the challenge could bring? In using Bollywood, the show is once again going global as it hypes dance and fuses it to the hip-hop culture. Last week, I gave a quick intro to a dance crew from Korea called Last for One. Here’s their take on hip hop.

-- Jevon Phillips