SYTYCD 9: The Auditions/Vegas

In case you think I am just full of serious political stuff, I have decided to blog about So You Think You Can Dance. It is my favorite summer show and only through the power of the internet can I talk about it in length. So let's start with the auditions this year.

I actually really liked a lot of the auditions this year. I feel like they really cut down a lot on the number of "joke dancers." Typically, I think they have a lot more dancers featured that don't make it. And for maybe the first couple of seasons that is entertaining, but come season 9 it is time to show only the seriously good dancers. Also, I tend to like auditions because this is like the one time where we get to see a lot of hip-hop dancers. Too soon are they typically hand-waved away and cut.

It is no secret that SYTYCD has a strong contemporary bias but during the auditions there is a lot of hip-hop featured. Almost as many, if not more, hip-hop dancers are shown getting their ticket to Vegas as contemporary dancers. But there is a flip side to this as well, more hip-hop (and ballroom) dancers are sent to choreography before earning their ticket. If a contemporary dancer gives a heartwrenching solo, they automatically get sent through to Vegas. This year though, with Hampton "The Exorcist," Dragon House, and Shafeek Westbrook we saw hip-hop dancers with stellar solos go straight through Vegas. I would consider that an improvement on previous years.

But when you get to Vegas that unfortunate bias for contemporary dancers really begins to rear its head. It didn't seem that way at first though as tWitch and Comfort from season 4 started off Vegas week with hip-hop. I could not be more grateful for these two. Too often, Vegas hip-hop choreography is handed to NappTabs whose routines are typically tailored for contemporary dancers. I knew that this way, at least some of the really non-versatile contemporary dancers would get cut. And they did, we also lost some hip-hop guys who couldn't really pick up choreography (which isn't surprising, but that is for another essay). I was actually pretty happy with Vegas, until we got to the contemporary round. It was the last round and Mariah Spears, a krumper, was cut. Now, we didn't see the entire round, but from what we did see, there is no way she was as bad at that contemporary as some of the contemporary girls were in the hip-hop. SYTYCD hasn't seen a female hip-hop dancer in 4 years (since Comfort in S4) and it would have been really nice to see her make it through even if it was only for diversity sake. Too often, the US version of the show equates female dancer with contemporary dancer (or ballroom dancer), and that is something that I think that the show needs to fix.

Other than that, I really enjoyed the episodes. This will get better when the actual live shows start. It is hard to encapsulate like 4 weeks of show in a couple of paragraphs.