( continues...) the table while Twitch danced. In a night of really stellar dances, it was just OK. That could be trouble next week. I agreed with Miss Debbie Allen that I was watching Twitch more than I was watching Hayley. That’s never a good thing and we have seen people hold their own with him in the past (Sasha comes to mind). I don’t know. As Nigel noted, she’s never been B3 before, so somebody in America must really like her. And I did love how Nigel kind of broke down what it really takes to be a working dancer. So good for the kids to hear.

Jenna and Neil/Contemporary/I Can’t Make You Love Me/Mark Masri – Mandy contemporary is also nice but the Hunchback is never going to be my favorite. And is it just me or does he not even look like the same person anymore? I swear, I wouldn’t have recognized him if they hadn’t said it was Neil. The intro package also seemed perfunctory. Jenna didn’t even get to say anything. Yeah, I’m sensing that she’s no longer a Nigel favorite. I will say that Jenna is one of the most versatile ballroom girls that they’ve ever had on the show. Probably right up there with Lacey in terms of her technique in contemporary. I thought this piece was exquisite. The running lift where they traveled the whole stage and then he picked her up into a turning shoulder lift with one hand? So difficult and beautifully executed. I thought the staging didn’t help out much as there were too many shadows and sometimes the dancers got obscured stuck in a dark corner, but the lifts were on point. Both showed lovely lines and extensions.. I noticed that there wasn’t a lot of cheering from the audience though, even on some of the big dramatic lifts that usually get the teens rallied. And Nigel agrees with me about her versatility. I don’t know how I feel about being in agreement with Nigel. He’s right in this case, so I’ll take it. I can’t tell whether they’ll save her over Mackenzie but they should. She really is a beautiful dancer.

Jasmine and Marko/Jazz/Blurred Lines/Robin Thicke – Ray Leeper is very hit or miss for me, so I’m interested to see whether good Ray or bad Ray shows up. OK, I was already almost all in just with the song choice. I love that ditty and I love Robin Thicke. I don’t care what anyone says about it being potentially kind of rape-y. I also appreciate the whole Janelle Monae vibe Jasmine’s costuming is giving off. I must give it up to the make up, hair and wardrobe crews. Did they fire all the hos and crack monkeys? Hmm, so I wanted to love this piece and just wound up kind of liking it. I liked the really stylized movements, all the bent knees, the isolations at the hips and shoulders and neck. I liked the characterization (on both dancers). I thought some of the bigger tricks seemed out of place in such a stylized piece. However, I was super distracted in that I didn’t think the two of them matched up at all. It’s tough because Jasmine is such a tall drink of water and Marko is like a compact, pocket dancer. It just wasn’t right between the two of them, His movements were much more staccato and cut off and hers were much more groovy and in the pocket. I don’t know which of them was doing it “right” but they weren’t doing it the same way and with so much side by side dancing, that became a huge distraction. Eh, I still love Other Jasmine and I think she put in work here, but I didn’t love this routine. I think the judges were confused by it too, which is why they defaulted to saying their eyes went to Jasmine more than Marko. This was a miss as a pairing.

Mackenzie and Jacob/Broadway/Too Darn Hot/Ella Fitzgerald – Jacob Karr. Oh, y’all know I think he is everything. And I usually quite enjoy Spencer’s Broadway pieces. This should be fun. If Mackenzie does well with this, it might vault her up over Hayley and her mediocre hip hop for a change (provided she even survives the week). And the routine was heaven. What did I love about it? Everything. Everything. From the opening on the table where she lays out that develope ending in a perfectly pointed through the pinky toe (continued...)

( continues...) foot (clad in red) – work! These children came to work. The choreography was stunning. I want to see this show even though I know it doesn’t exist. I think my favorite moment might have actually been the mirrored developes that were held and then the little kick at the end. It was such a “Toma, bitch! What?” moment. But then again, I also loved the break down at the end when it switched from remix Ella to pure Jazz Ella and they were doing all the glorious turn sequences and kicks across the floor and it felt all MGM Classics dazzling. Mackenzie was amazing in this piece. It’s the first time I’ve seen her sparkle. She was good in her partnership with Paul, but he kind of overshadowed her, I felt, and Hayley was there every week just being a shinier version of her. But this week she definitely flipped the script.

Nico and Comfort/Hip Hop/Get Ur Freak On/Missy Elliot - Nico gets a NappyTab hip hop? Yeah, they are ready for him to go home. Comfort is good at dancing down to her partners’ levels but she is not great at bringing them up to hers. NappyTab earns one point from me for using the old school Missy jam, but then they lose it right back with the whole reptile concept. Just let them dance to a hot track. We’ll get it. Oh, how the judges just lied to this kid (except Nigel). Comfort totally destroyed him on that dance floor without even really trying. Her reigned in was 100 times more hype than his full out. He was just too pulled up still. Too tall and not nearly sunk down enough into the ground, especially for a routine where they were supposed to be reptiles. Everything need more entrega…and I’m so upset that he’s making me speak Spanish because that routine could’ve been fire. It’s one of the better choreographed NappyTab pieces I’ve seen, requiring some actual skill with hip hop dancing. For that, at least, I’ll credit Nico. They did not give him some watered down lyrical hop pablum and he took a run at it. I don’t think he was successful at all. I only wanted to watch Comfort. Any time he was mainly in frame, I just wanted him to go away and let me see more of her. And can we pause to say WTF, camera people? I know it must be hard to get all those shots and angles just right but y’all can’t just run across the front of the stage all through the shot. Come on. It’s like the lighting and camera folks stole all the hair, make up and wardrobe hos crack and just went completely balls out crazy this week. Stage is consistently too dark. Wonky camera work. Meanwhile, the costuming has been a home run. Weird.

Tucker and Robert/Contemporary/Medicine/Daughter – God bless Peanut for bringing the same sex coupling. Even if Robert is not my favorite All Star. Soooo, let me get this straight. Nico gets a dance totally outside his comfort zone while Tucker gets a contemporary piece with one of the all time favorite contestants and choreographers on the show and it has the emotional Dead Daddy Dance/Cancer Dance angle? ‘Cause that’s totally fair. I mean, I shouldn’t complain because I want Nico to go home anyway, but come on. They should at least have a more level playing field on which to do battle. Once again, I’m just . . . I don’t have the words. Normally, I can’t stand these emotionally charged dances because I find them not only manipulative but also I find that it takes away from the actual quality of the dance but this piece was just phenomenal. I didn’t even care that the last series of leaps was not perfectly in synch (well, it was noticeable and they were perfectly in synch in the rehearsal footage, but I didn’t even care). The male assisted lifts were incredible. I really loved that one point where they had clasped hands, facing each other and broke down from shoulder, waist, down through the knees and then Robert had that flexed foot low kick. Ugh. Gut punch of beauty. They were breathing that piece. I felt my own self getting a little teary eyed. Not gonna lie. What a way to cap an outstanding night of dancing. And now I need to go and immediately find out what the deal is with Danny because (continued...)

( continues...) I am dying to know!

Going Home

Jenna over Mackenzie (and on the night she had her very best night). Ouch. That’s brutal. Seems like Nigel still has Jenna in his favorites box. I’m not sure I agree. Jenna is clearly just not clicking on the show. I’d be surprised if she’s not back in the bottom again next week along with probably Hayley or Amy. Tucker over Nico was an easy one. Next week’s bottom two for the boys will be brutal. The only one who danced poorly tonight is going home. Every one of the 4 boys left turned it out. I suppose I’d go with Fik Shun because he is a more limited dancer than the rest of the bunch still left and . . .yeah, I got nothing other than that. Paul vs. Aaron vs. Tucker, flip a damn coin.

Love that the All Stars will be choreographing next week. I hope Alex is on. I would also love to see some of Allison’s choreography. And seeing Pasha back in a ballroom number would be heaven.

ETA: Oh my gawd, y'all! 5 posts long. That is ridonk. So sorry.

I just watched too, and THAT was the best full night of dancing I've seen on SYTYCD in SEASONS. So many things to love! (Gah, MELANIE.) Not least the 5-post magnificence of kat perez.

So....what kat said. KAT PEREZ, ladies and gentlemen.

I just watched too, and THAT was the best full night of dancing I've seen on SYTYCD in SEASONS.

It totally was. I plan to watch all the dances again (except for the hip hop pieces which were less successful) tonight and I'm not even a little bit ashamed of it. Nothing else on TV tonight will be as good as SYTYCD last night. That's truth!

Oooh, escandalo! This choreographer is claiming that Peanut stole her choreo for the Travis/Tucker dance tonight. I'm not so sure I buy it. Obviously, the music is the same and thematically, the two dances are very similar. And of course both featured a same sex pairing. I think the movements at the beginning of the dance are very similar to what's in Travis' piece, but that's about it. The bulk of Travis' dance seems very different from hers. The movement vocabulary is familiar, but that's true of lots of contemporary pieces.

What it mainly makes me think about is how small and incestuous the world of dance can be, especially on the competition circuit. Apparently, Peanut was at the same dance convention/competition (Jump) that this woman, Shannon Mather, was attending and her company did this piece at Jump. The woman also claims that she submitted this piece to SYTYCD for a shot to try to become a choreographer on the show and they rejected it. Seems this woman tweeted right after the show about SYTYCD owing her money and seriously implied that Travis stole the piece. Travis has since tweeted back that he had picked out this music, for just such a chance as this piece presented way back 4-5 months ago. That sounds like total bullshit. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle. Anyway, good kerfuffle!

Re Nico's costume: webbed knees. 'nuf said.

Ugh. Backstreet Boys are on America's Got Talent which means I had to stop my channel flipping and watch because they are singing I Want It That Way and how can you not? Exactly. But they are so painfully out of tune and most of them (except Nick and Kevin) are old and bloated . . . AJ has some sort of mountain man beard and it's making me so, so sad. Look away. I just want to remember them as they were.

Mackenzie was amazing in this piece. It’s the first time I’ve seen her sparkle

Yeah, after that number I was very disappointed they sent her home. Sad.

Jenna over Mackenzie (and on the night she had her very best night). Ouch. That’s brutal. Seems like Nigel still has Jenna in his favorites box. I’m not sure I agree. Jenna is clearly just not clicking on the show.

Exactly--like, Jenna is awesome, but you can only save her so many times if America doesn't love her, y'all.

However, I was super distracted in that I didn’t think the two of them matched up at all. It’s tough because Jasmine is such a tall drink of water and Marko is like a compact, pocket dancer. It just wasn’t right between the two of them, His movements were much more staccato and cut off and hers were much more groovy and in the pocket. I don’t know which of them was doing it “right” but they weren’t doing it the same way

Agreed--I thought she was great, and doing a whole Michael Jackson-ish thing, but he was doing a whole other thing. Which didn't work with them wearing the same outfit and dancing side by side!

And can we pause to say WTF, camera people? I know it must be hard to get all those shots and angles just right but y’all can’t just run across the front of the stage all through the shot

Yes, that made me laugh.