Cat rattles off the top eighteen dancers after we're reminded that Paris and Tony got the heave-ho last week, mainly because they were seemingly the only couple that didn't result in Mary screeching at us.
Cat comes out, a lady in red, although someone's stolen the right shoulder of her dress. She introduces the judges. Lil' C's at the judges' table tonight, and Cat asks him if he watched the show last week, and he says he didn't because he was actually there live, and it was a very solid beginning to the season. Woo! Solid beginning!
Cat moves on to Mary and notes that we know Mary can't look surprised anymore -- Botox reference -- and asks if Mary's got any more revelations. Mary laughs her ass off for five minutes, and then mugs like crazy, eyes darting back and forth, and says, "What happens on the performance show stays on the performance show," and I don't think it's too much to ask that if you're going to be the millionth person to make a tired reference to the Vegas slogan that it at least MAKE SOME SORT OF SENSE. Nigel tries to pinch Mary's cheek only he can't get a grip because it's like trying to pinch a billiard ball. Mary tries to pretend her Botox revelation was all a dream sequence, and Cat tells her that all her friends love her even more now and think she's fabulous. Which is quite disappointing, if it's true. I like to picture Cat's friends being a little bit more sophisticated than that. You know, enjoying some Benny Hill and the like. And then Nigel startles everyone by advising the dancers to show the audience their strengths, not their weaknesses.
So let's get right to it! Tonight's dance-couple time-waster is all about asking the dancers what "America needs to know" about their partners. First up: Randi and Evan. Evan tells us Randi has a dog that she treats like a child, and the accompanying picture tells us that, apparently, Randi loves to share passionate kisses with children. She's one of those "put the dog on speakerphone so it can bark at me" dingbats. Randi really gets the short end of the stick here, as she tells us that Evan is a gearhead who built his own car from scratch. She can't even change a tire, so they're total opposites.
Evan says the performance last week was amazing, and he feels like a rock star, and Randi says it was crazy to be out there and have people chanting their names.
This week, they're doing jive, which neither of them have ever done before. Louis Van Amstel is choreographing them, and he tells us how much he loves the jive. "It's so much about personality." Randi tells us it's nice to do a dance that shows off what dorks they are. Meanwhile, Evan says the dance is all about fun to the point that he suggests putting a "fun counter" in the corner of the screen to count how often they use the word "fun," and whoever puts this show together obliges, and the counter is up to thirteen by the time we get to see the actual performance.
Yay, it's Ray Charles! He's singing "Shake a Tail Feather," which sounds like it could conceivably be a euphemism for anal sex. I gotta admit, they look like they're having fun. They jive -- separately and together -- all over the stage, and do a couple of vibrating-leg moves. Evan spins Randi around, faster than I was aware it was possible for a human to spin! She was spinning, like, Tasmanian Devil-fast. They shake their chests at each other. Randi bends over backward and Evan takes a jump-split, clearing her entire body with room to spare. Nice! They join hands for some closing kicks and steps, and then Evan lifts Randi up so she locks her legs around him for a few minutes. Then there is some ass-grabbing (Evan grabs Randi's hips, probably hoping not to be beaten to death by her husband). Nice all around. Cat's all, "What's a little tush grabbing among friends?" Which is little closer to what I envision when I think of Cat and her friends.
"Out the box with a bang," declares Lil' C. He tells Evan that there's a little "divinity" (?) to his movement that makes it look too smooth, and the subtle approach may not work for him. He's got to "bust out" of that, or something. Lil' C calls Randi a firecracker and says they have a good partnership going on.
And because the "fun counter" was a cute, relatively funny bit, who does Cat turn to in order to help beat it into the ground? Mary. So let's skip that. Mary says she thinks the two of them are probably the two dancers best suited for jive, so she thought it should have been better than it was. She says Randi was much stronger out there than Evan, who was a little sloppy with his feet and didn't quite hit the triple-step action quite right. Still it was a great way to start the show, says Mary. Except for the parts that sucked, I suppose.
Nigel then congratulates Louis, and says it's great to have him on board as in an import from Dancing With the Stars. Dancing With the Stars? Never heard of it. He echoes what Mary said about Evan needing to be a little stronger, and fends off the booing by ordering the audience to listen to what he says, and then boo. But he winds up by saying that the two of them as a couple are tremendous, so everyone's cheering again. Cat mimics the little gestures Nigel makes when he's making a point, and then I think Nigel is pretending to be a snake threatening to bite off Mary's face.
up: Melissa and Ade. Ade says Melissa has been married for four years, and her sister married her husband's brother. He seems to be quite confused by it, just as Melissa is equally at a loss in saying Ade's full name: "Adetokunbo Isaac Kayode Obayomi." I love that "Isaac" in there. Feels like "Hayes" should come right after it. He gives us the African pronunciation, which goes a long way towards explaining why he goes by Ade (which people mess up too, he tells us).
This week, they're doing jazz. Ade's excited. Melissa is too, unless they're working with Sonya, in which case they're "gonna die." I don't think Melissa means that figuratively, either. I think Melissa is worried that Sonya might actual kill them in some kind of post-apocalyptic battle arena.
Of course they get Sonya, and she immediately steals Ade's "lucky pick" and sticks it in her own hair, and then she prattles on at us about how this dance is about a high-maintenance girl and the cliché man who hates to lose, and I think it's awesome that Sonya is throwing clichés at us. Ade throws Melissa around, and then Melissa jumps on Ade's back. Melissa says she needs to work on getting the sweet nice ballerina out of there, and Sonya talks spacily about getting Melissa to dive into the mud. Ade figures they're going to "kill it," which is something he's said nearly as often as Evan and Randi said "fun."
So they dance to some kind of techno tune by Terry Poison, and the piece starts out with Melissa already on Ade's back, hampering him while he tries to move. He's shirtless in black leather pants, she's shirtless in tight pink pants. This is jazz? This looks like ... I don't know, contemporary hip-hop. Ade helps Melissa through a back flip, then kicks his leg over her. He pirouettes, picks her up, spins her around, her legs sticking straight out. As promised she jumps on his back, which makes him struggle to move, and it ends with him dipping her and freezing. "You looked like two naughty rock and roll imps up to no good," says Cat.
Lil' C says, "That was buck," and Cat, Melissa and Ade do a celebratory chest bump. Lil' C reminds Ade that he was surprised to get picked for the top 20, since Ade thought his main competition had already made it onto the list. Lil' C says he thinks Ade might be the competition for everyone else, and likes that he's "modifying (his) manipulation of movement" which I think is an annoying way of saying Ade's getting better. As for Melissa, he talks about the way Sonya makes you search for "that hidden person on the inside," and praises Melissa for submerging herself in it.
Mary: "It's time to give you guys some tough love." Everyone groans. "Because it was REALLY TOUGH TO FIND SOMETHING NOT TO LOVE," she screams. Melissa is quirky and phenomenal, and Ade's technique and movement was soaring across the stage. "The gentle giant is still out there, just WOO!" she yells. Fortunately, she's done.
Nigel says he likes the way Sonya's routines allow the dancers to show off technique, and talks about Ade's jumps in the hurdle position, and he says if he didn't know Melissa was a ballerina, he never would have guessed it. "That was a great routine from Sonya, I thought you danced it brilliantly. Well done," he says. To be fair, Melissa cut her teeth dancing the Charleston in the '20s, so she should be good.
What secrets do Caitlin and Jason have? Caitlin says Jason had a serious obsession with Michael Jackson. Which isn't surprising for a dancer. What makes it awesome is the home video of a Michael Jacksonfied Jason practicing his Gloved One dance moves, including the fantastic "wearing an open white shirt while standing in front of a fan" move. Sweet. Jason tells us Caitlin talks in baby voices all the time (which didn't surprise me) and also that she likes to act like a velociraptor (which did). Amusing footage follows.
Yay! Shane Sparks hip-hop routine! Caitlin explains that it's about a couple who meet in a bar and have an intense relationship for a week and then she leaves and then he sees her again and wants her back. Shane Sparks' face on television earns a little cheer from the audience. "Chemistry is the story. That's everything," he says. Then we get to enjoy one of those annoying bits in which we're reminding that all dance couples are just inches away from having sex with each other, in this case, because Jason's pants kept slipping down.
"Missin You" by Trey Songz is the song. The dancers sit on opposite sides of the stage. Jason gets up, does some herky-jerky popping while Caitlin strolls around all forlorn, and then they bump into each other and start to get their groove on. Caitlin slides along Jason's back. She puts her hands on his hips and slides her hands down his pants, which manage to stay on. Jason freezes while Caitlin gets her hip-hop on, which didn't do a whole lot for me, with its Mick Jagger rooster strut, crouched-leg spread and arm-waving. At least the effort's there. Jason gets back in action as the two of them get closer and push away. Caitlin bends over backwards and does a ... what is that called? Backwards somersault? It looks cool. The two of them wind up in each other's arms.
Lil' C notes that the audience loved them, but he did not. He says the choreographer's fantasy has to become the dancers' reality, but he felt it became a "nightmare" for them up on stage. He says the moves were sharp and clean, but because of that it came off corny. Mary says it came off like Michael Jackson and Britney Spears dancing together. Both great dancers, but different dancers, and she points out the less-than-synchronized body rolls they did. Awesome. Actually useful critique from Mary, with corresponding footage! Yay!
Nigel blows a lot of hooey about how they expect this hard edge from hip-hop (which you'd never know based on all the praise heaped on Taboleon's routines). He says Shane changed up his style to fit the dancers, neither of whom are especially hard-hitting hip-hoppers, and he thought they looked good up there.
Janette and Brandon! Brandon says when Janette was little she had the worst teeth ever! Judging from the photos, "worst teeth ever!" means "big front teeth!" I mean, it's not like she was Shane MacGowan, for god's sake. Janette tells us that despite Brandon's body, he has never worked out a day in his life. I think it's cute that she believed him when he told her that. Well, I suppose when you're lifting partners over the head all the time, you don't need a gym.
This week they're dancing disco with Doriana Sanchez, who is excited to work with them because they're both exceptional dancers. Brandon's a little disconcerted by the fast pace of the music, but he seems to pick it up quickly, as opposed to Janette, who apparently shuts down despite Sanchez going all "Latina power!" on her.
So they get their groove on to "Loving Is Really My Game" by Brainstorm, dancing around in spotlights that are alternately white and multi-colored. Absolutely frenetic pace, like it's more of a disco workout than a dance. The two of them spin around, then lock arms and push in and out. Brandon lifts Janette up on to his shoulders, her legs spread out, she's facing away from him, and he twirls around. Synchronized stepping, and then Brandon does a couple of back flips. The beat slows down and they embrace for some dips. Brandon flips her through his arms and onto the floor, where she spins around on the floor. Some high leg kicks by Janette, and some arm waving, another lift (Janette horizontal out) and into the finish, Janette laid backward against Brandon's leg.
Lil' C says the "primary focus of all obstacles is to induce labor, so progression can be born." People start to titter, and he orders them to follow him, and says he just saw the "birth of progression" in two dancers, and proceeds to call Brandon amazing while not at all owning up to slamming Brandon before. Notice, though, that he cagily talked about progression. So it's not as though Lil' C was wrong about Brandon before; rather, Brandon is getting better. Right? Lil' C talks about a stumble from Janette towards the end (right before her high kick) but it was OK because she recovered and kept it going. "You did not break character at all. Good job. Good job, both of you guys."
Jesus Christ, Mary! They're called MICROPHONES. That means that you don't have to SHOUT at us! You don't have to scream at Nigel that it looks like the dancers were on fast-forward, you don't have to shout at the dancers that that was the fastest disco she's ever seen on this show or any other show! You can talk in a normal voice and WE WILL HEAR YOU. Then she makes a "not!" joke. Twice! For those of you who are confused, "Not!" jokes were very popular twenty years ago. Then she screams and screams and goddamn SCREAMS, and Brandon and Janette have that "clapping and over the top laughing" reaction that all the dancers are required to have when Mary completely loses her mind, which I swear to god happens more and more each season. Nigel then says that if he could stand up and scream like Mary he would. But he's not high. He praises all the elements that Doriana mixed in, and then brings up Dirty Dancing, which BARELY PREDATES "not!" jokes, and then warns Brandon that Mia Michaels is doing the routine tomorrow. This also serves as a warning to us, but it doesn't do me any good, since I don't have a bomb shelter.
Asuka and Vitolio are up . We find out that Vitolio is obsessed with motorcycles, while Asuka likes to blow spit bubbles. Asuka "explains" that one time she saw someone doing it, so she tried it. Was that "someone" five months old?
They're doing a waltz with Louis Van Amstel, which Asuka is really excited about. She's apparently less excited about Vitolio, who blames their lack of chemistry thus far on Asuka not wanting to jump his bones. "How handsome I am, and she's not attracted to me," he says, baffled. Louis talks to Vitolio about what a compelling life story Vitolio has, and Asuka says America doesn't know what Vitolio has gone through, and I have to say that since it's brought up every show, America (the America that watches this show, anyway) has a pretty good idea by this point. Louis says, "I want him to dance full of pain, and show the beauty of where he comes from." So this is going to be one of those dances where you can't dislike it without, you know, cheering for children to go to orphanages.
So they're dancing to Enya, which I think needs to be OUTLAWED by this point. Asuka caresses Vitolio's cheek, and they dance apart from each other for while, very gracefully, and then join hands and move across the floor together. After pulling her in a split position towards him, Vitolio swings Asuka around him, low enough to the ground that she can trim the edges of your lawn. Moments later he tosses her over his shoulder (less gracefully) and they do some separate, synchronized movement. At the end, Vitolio spins her around onto the floor, and she twirls to come to rest perfectly positioned in front of the camera, Vitolio over her shoulder.
Cat tells them they looked "exquisitely beautiful" out there, before suspiciously starting with Mary first. Mary's moved to the point of tears, and says she was disappointed with them last week, but not this week. She says this was the most honest she's seen Vitolio dance so far, even if a couple of the actual movements weren't as strong as they should have been. Asuka had a passion in her that she loved, and Mary credits Louis for that.
Lil' C says the choppy steps that Mary referred to were balanced out by the sincerity of his emotion. "You're not afraid to be vulnerable," he says. He then talks about Asuka's "dominant submission," which is something about being able to lead but letting Vitolio do it, whatever that's supposed to mean.
Nigel says anyone who wasn't moved by the beauty of that dance is heartless, which is rather harsh, and that they brought a quality rarely seen to their performance. He feels like he's seeing a different couple up there this week. Kinda tough to compare the two dance styles, though, isn't it? Anyway, Nigel says he hopes their quality is recognized by the country.
Kayla and Max? Max is the "house dad," Kayla tells us, because he likes to cook for the other dancers at the SYTYCD Compound or wherever it is they stay. Max, though, says he's called the "housewife" and it's not cool. As for Kayla? "Kayla likes to text a lot," says Max. Oh, fucking FASCINATING. "I can't put my goddamn cellphone down! That's the most interesting thing my partner was able to find out about me!" She says she can text a hundred words a minute. Well, when "C" and "U" are considered words, I guess I believe that.
Brian Freedman is doing a pop-jazz routine, which is about a princess. Max is coming in to perform for Kayla, but he's got an ulterior motive: stealing her throne. And knock me over: Kayla says playing a princess came easy to her. "This is a very strenuous routine when it comes to body," says Brian.
Spotlights on the stage highlight the path between Max to Kayla, who's lounging on an old-timey couch. A "settee," I believe. There's a whole lot of preening and prancing by Max, and some of the same from Kayla as a reaction as he dances towards her. Max practically covers the whole stage as he leaps into a forward roll. He stands up on the settee or the table in front of it, which is where he lifts her up and they start dancing around together. I can't even begin to describe this, even badly as I normally do. Then he kills her through the power of dance, which was kind of cool, and takes over the settee.
Lil' C says when you're working with the caliber of choreographers they have on this show, it's a challenge to pick up the choreographers' vernacular really quickly, and with Brian it's especially hard. But he thinks Maksim did a good job. "Kayla, I have nothing to say to you. You are amazing, period." Yeah, she was good. Her grandparents cheer from the audience.
Over to Mary, who laughs for five hours about the outfit Max has on (weird scarf collar, glittery black tank top, burnt orange pants), then says she still saw past it to see how good his dancing was. And then she screeches at Kayla that she's still on the hot tamale train. Nigel calls her a frontrunner and tells Max that his problem is keeping up with Kayla, which he says Max did tonight. He says Max's character reminds him of Kevin Spacey from The Usual Suspects, which I really think is more about Max himself kind of looking like Kevin Spacey than the actual dance.
Jonathan and Karla? Karla is actually a bad-ass hip-hop dancer, Jonathan tells us. He says that nobody knows that, but he also says she's a member of this really well known hip-hop dance crew. [The Boogie Bots! They were on Shane Sparks' other show America's Best Dance Crew. -- Angel] And Jonathan? He really loves to sing, but he's not very good at it. We see him singing the U.S. national anthem while he plays on his computer or something. And he's not that bad.
Anyway, they're doing some contemporary this week, choreographed by Stacey Tookey, new to the show. She explains that this piece is about two strangers who have an accidental meeting, and how they deal with temptation. Jonathan's excited to show America that he can do other styles of dance. There are a lot of lifts to throw, but all we see in rehearsal is Karla falling on him a lot.
They're dancing to "Falling Slowly" by The Frames. It's ... eh, you know. The usual kind of contemporary stuff. "We're reaching towards each other, and then we're pulling back, and I'm going to do a leg lift while you do a pirouette, and now it's time to reach for each other again, and now we're going to move in unison, and I'm going to hold onto you," and apparently the way these strangers deal with temptation is to give in to it. I guess it would be a boring dance if they just walked away from each other. There is a lot of lifting and throwing and clutching and grabbing. The two of them, character-wise, look exhausted by the end, and then Jonathan smiles and wraps her arms around Karla, who doesn't look as enthralled, and she pulls his arms off her and walks away.
Mary says this is something she's never said in five seasons of this show: "Jonathan, you danced that style better than your own." OK, but how many dancers named Jonathan have been on this show? I don't think she's had that much opportunity to say that. And then she spoils the moment by screeching "THAT IS CRAZY!" And she yells about how they've gone from underdogs to the spotlight, and blah blah blah, she's spellbound.
Nigel FINALLY takes over to talk about Jonathan's centre of gravity, which was almost like "tai chi," and he says there's a real lesson to be learned, because they were very close to being cut last week, but have grown (which, if you think about it, is really an argument to keep twenty dancers all season long so they can all get better all season) and then he praises Stacey, who he calls the best choreographer from So You Think You Can Dance Canada. Well, yeah, but every other choreographer is forced to choreograph dancers in hockey skates. So it's not fair.
Lil' C says he danced the routine beautifully, and maintained their posture, blah blah blah, and overall it was "buck." Cat tells the dancers they gave her the first "Deeley chills" of the season.
Phillip and Jeanine are up . Jeanine says Phillip is a "super-nerd." He's in fact an engineering physics major and fascinated by science fiction, and he apparently has a reptile collection, and at one point he had forty reptiles in his room. Wow. Now that's interesting. A quirky hobby. So what about Jeanine? Well, she has a teddy bear.
SHE HAS A GODDAMN TEDDY BEAR, AND SHE DRESSES IT HOWEVER SHE WANTS. Jesus Christ. "I have a dog!" "I like to text!" "I have a teddy bear!" Melissa pops by to say that she remembers when teddy bears were invented, and how she voted for their namesake, Teddy Roosevelt.
They're dancing a tango with Tony Meredith. Phillip says he's tried to get a lot of ballroom basics, but not tango. Tony does admit to being surprised at their lack of ballroom knowledge. And in the course of the lifts, Phillip and Jeanine almost inadvertently have sex with each other, as usual.
It's a very slow, careful at first. Leg kicks, and Phillip spinning Jeanine around. If I had to guess, the tango is one that doesn't place as much demand on them as a pair with more knowledge, so it looks like they've danced it about as well as they could, like when they move backwards doing the tango crossover step thing. Overall, though, it just didn't really catch fire for me. Mary gives them an "a-plus" for attitude, but in technique it was really more of a C-minus. Nobody even really boos her, because everyone knows she's right. She says Jeanine was better out there than Phillip.
Lil' C says he's a Phillip fan, but a lack of confidence is "the heaviest anchor you can put on your art." He needs to take the confidence he has doing hip-hop to the other genres that he's going to get. As far as technique goes, Lil' C criticizes Phillip's bent knees, and Mary steps in to say he needs to have bent knees for this kind of tango, so if Lil' C saw that, that was a good thing, and Cat throws it to Tony Meredith for a ruling, which is a thumbs-up for the bent knees. "I stand corrected," says Lil' C. Nigel straightaway tells Phillip, "I loved the ways your knee were bent through the whole thing," drawing some laughs, including from me. Also, he points out that there are some times when Phillip's expressive face is a drawback, like when he visibly grimaces during a lift (complete with funny slow-motion footage). "It wasn't good, technically. It was great entertainment." Nigel compares it to taking any guy off the street and expecting them to learn the tango (which is pretty much exactly what this show is); it's not going to happen overnight.
Ashley and Kupono! Kupono has a crazy OCD thing, Ashley tells us. He doesn't like having things on a diagonal, and his closet has to be just so. Uniform spaces between hangers, shoes arranged in particular ways. You know, just being anal about something isn't really the same thing as an actual disorder, you know. As for Ashley, she puked all over her classmates when she was in first grade, which made them afraid that she would puke on them again. Well, fair enough!
They're doing a Shane Sparks hip-hop routine, in which Ashley is Kupono's shadow, and she has to do everything he does, which sounds interesting enough. Kupono says he could not get from one "hip to the hop" or whatever, and so on his to-do list he wrote down that he needs to find his "inner Shane Sparks."
So: another hip-hop routine, another latter-day Black Eyed Peas track. Ashley is lying on her side to Kupono, mimicking his movements as he stands up and takes some steps. I like it. And I like the synchronized hip-hop movements too, because they're very much in time to each other. There's a bridge in which we go from the tedious Fergie part to the more up-tempo will.i.am part in which Ashley and Kupono strip off their jackets and hit some harder hip-hop moves. Nicely danced, overall. Much better than the first Shane Sparks routine tonight. Miles ahead.
Mary says it was OK. She didn't hate it, and didn't love it. There was nothing in there that she could latch onto and say it was the best thing ever. Lil' C says it looked like Kupono struggled, which made it harder for Ashley to keep it going. Man, I really didn't think it was that bad. He does give credit to Ashley for staying in character and matching the tempo of the song in the second half. Nigel makes fun of Lil' C spouting off at the dancers a whole of nonsense and then asking if they know what he means, when Nigel himself never has a clue. I'd argue the same is true of Mary when she screams things like, "It's just, you know, pow! And oh my god! And ha ha ha ha! SCREECH!" Nigel says the dance ended just as it was getting good, which I agree with, so overall he was underwhelmed. He's happy Shane's back, but he doesn't feel the four dancers brought out the best in Shane's work. He feels let down for Shane. And I believe he also tries to claim that this show has evolved hip-hop somehow. Sands the edges off, maybe. I picture Nigel wanting to hang out with Shane after the show all the time, and Shane awkwardly trying to make excuses. "So, Shane, want to hit da club?" "You know, man, I think I'm going home early. time, dog."
Predictions for bottom three: Ashley and Kupono, Caitlin and Jason, Jeanine and Phillip. And Nigel talks about how this show has evolved Bollywood.