Wanted: Dancers for 82nd Academy Awards telecast

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The song-and-dance numbers performed during the annual Academy Awards telecasts tend to offer cringe-worthy moments. For many at-home viewers, these numbers provide an excellent opportunity to use the bathroom, refresh the chip bowl and tally Oscar pool ballots.

Still, the gaudy sequences provide employment opportunities for local dancers. Our friends at the 24 Frames blog have notified us that producers of the upcoming Oscars telecast will be holding open auditions for dancers on Jan. 22 and Jan. 23, at CenterStaging in Burbank.

According to a release sent out, the auditions are open to ‘professional-level male and female dancers in the contemporary and hip-hop styles who are between the ages of 18 and 30.’

Adam Shankman, one of the producers of the telecast, will be choreographing the audition numbers with associate choreographers Anne Fletcher and Jamal Sims.

This year’s Oscar ceremony will take place March 7 at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood.

To be completely fair, not all Oscar dance numbers have fallen flat. For the 2007 ceremony, the dance group Pilobolus performed an innovative series of shadow friezes from some of that year’s nominated pictures. And Hugh Jackman’s Broadway-style sequences brought some class to last year’s show.

Here’s hoping we’ll be seeing more numbers along those lines, as opposed to interpretive dances of ‘The Hurt Locker’ and ‘Precious.’

-- David Ng