cassidyrose | pop culture drivel (Reply)

Thoughts on tonight's episode of "So You Think You Can Dance":

I call shenanigans on the ballet dancer getting the first-ever ballet dance on the show and the hip hop dancer getting his *second* hip hop dance in four weeks.
I call equal shenanigans on the two dancers the judges seemed itching to do away with last week getting the kiss of death quickstep.
I am grateful we finally saw another "Broadway" choreographer who clearly knew she was doing.
Note to judges: I know from weird dance and have yet to see anything on SYTYCD that even approaches truly weird. The dances you called "weird" tonight just were not that odd. They were not the same manufactured crap you seem to love so dearly, but they were still fairly conventional in their movement vocabularies and even themes (odd themes maybe, but nothing earth shatteringly weird.) Until you have seen a dancer spin a blow-up doll around her finger and then later dance with a skirt of diet coke cans, or a group of naked dancers writhing on the floor and making a human mountain, or a dance involving clothes changing in a bathroom of a museum (real bathroom, real museum--no set) I do not consider you qualified to comment on the weirdness of dance. I hereby sentence you to six months viewing modern, post-modern, and post-post modern dance in San Francisco's grungiest theater locations before judging the show again.
Judges, stop patting yourselves on the backs on for whatever it is you think you are doing for dance. It's getting old and trite.
Choreographers: I often really hate props, especially super-literal ones (you all are allowed to put me out of my misery if I *ever* choreograph a romantically-themed dance on a fucking bed). The chain tonight was obnoxious and distracting. LOSE THE STUPID PROPS!
Let's call a weak leap a weak leap. Kupono's leaps and jumps were not nearly as strong and powerful as they could have been. I've seen way better and do almost as well myself. Not so impressed.
The hooded, gloved unitard is a crime against humanity. May it never appear on my TV screen or on stage again unless it is in the context of wacky French-Canadian clowns.

Oh, and my brain still hurts from that Rufus Wainwright rendition of "Puttin' on the Ritz".