So I Think A Few of Them Can Dance

Ok, I'm officially hooked on Season 2 of Fox's "So You Think You Can Dance?" Tonight's episode was the Vegas semifinals - 116 contestants from the 4 audition cities (NYC, Charleston, Chicago, & LA) were narrowed down to 42. Last week they said 121 made it through; I wonder what happened to the other 5??

For each of the 1st two days, the contestants were taught a routine by one of the choreographers, then after an hour of group practice took the stage in small groups to perform. Some would advance, some would be cut, & borderline dancers would come back to do a solo later. For each round, each of the 5 judges would each score the contestants on a scale from 0 (horrible) to 3 (awesome), IIRC - the total possible score then was 15.

First up was Shane. They brought 34 people up on stage who'd scored between 1 and 6. But let them all continue since it was only the 1st round.

Second (the afternoon of the 1st day) was Mary with a Ballroom class - and Season 1's Artem was there as her partner!! Loved him, glad she's "working" with him!! Ok, after the samba 35 were cut. Some they listed as being through: Allison, Stanislav, Donyelle, Claire (whose ankle is injured), Crystal, and Travis (my favorite so far, a spiky-haired guy from Week 1, and I think they said he got a perfect score!!). Lynn Rae and Ryan (and his attitude) did solos and were both eliminated. 81 move on to Day 2....

After a maximum of 6 hours of sleep, Mia teaches the group a lyrical dance (yay!). They focus first on the 3 "street dancers" left: Chris, my favorite of the 6 Steppers, forgot his choreography & is cut; Musa goes to solo round & then gets through; and Hawk (other 6 Step guy) gets through. We also see Benji do a "solo" (a fun swing dance w/his cousin as his partner) and advance. Claire's foot is worse and after a trip to the hospital returns to withdraw from the competition. I wasn't that impressed w/her dancing but she has the best attitude (really pushed through the pain as much as she could) and seems like the sweetest thing ever. Nigel has an emotional chat w/her and exhorts her to take care of the foot, then keep training/practicing, and return next season, when they will let her pick up where she left off (skipping the initial audition rounds & advancing directly to the semifinals). Everyone says a teary good-bye but then we must move on...

To Brian (yay! except the clips of *him* dancing/teaching were way too short) and an intricate hip-hop/jazz fusion routine. Ballet Mark from NY is cut but that's about all they showed. Good (enough) and advancing are Mike (young tapper warned by Nigel re: making any more mistakes), James, Travis (yay!),
Ben (I guess he was sick; Nigel chewed him out for complaining), Hawk (who humbly and emotionally claimed he shouldn't be advancing because he'd had no training & others were better), the couple Julia (who 'collapsed' and went to the hospital but returned ok, and they never said what was wrong) & Stanislav, and lots of girls, including Donyelle, I think, and a great Asian gal whose name they didn't show.

That's it for tonight; tomorrow we see Day 3, where the remaining 42 do solos, receive no immediate feedback, and are narrowed down to the top 10 each male and female finalists. The preview showed Benji falling to the floor in tears & made it look like he gets cut, but you never can tell. As long as Travis makes it (and I think he's a shoo-in) I'm happy.

Quote of the night goes to Nigel: "I'm not a human being, I'm a television producer!"


In other news, I heard The Lovehammers' "Trees" on our local high school's radio station today! mmmMarty, wheeee!!