I’m recapping both performance night and results show night in one fell swoop, kittens. Took me a while to recover from being floored by the sight of shirtless Legacy. Seriously, darlings. Shirtless Legacy. DAMN! And just when I thought I’d recovered enough, I was traumatized by Cat’s attempt to turn herself into a mime or a denizen of Marie Antoinette’s court last night. What was with the white on white on white make up during the results show? The poor girl looked like she’d fallen head first into the camera monkeys’ coke stores and then wrapped herself in a couple of the yellowed ends of a craft services table cloth, pinned a rhinestone novelty tie under her neck, and wandered out onto the stage all dazed and confused.
For all that happened this week, nothing much happened, right? We lost two people who were pretty sure bets not to make top 10. Mollee and Nathan continued to suck the life out of me with their combined ability to just really be nasty pieces of work. Jakob continued being a slightly built ball of fantasticism. Who knows all the dance moves to ‘NSync’s Bye Bye Bye which is Made. Of. Awesome! But I had a hard time summoning up either enthusiasm or outrage over this week’s installment of our ongoing dance world soap opera. Everything was just uniformly good. Even Mollee/Nathan, who were bad, were bad because they were just OK. I guess we’ll just dive in and separate the Kit from the Caboodle.
Performance night: Kit
Cat looked adorable. Like a gorgeous, foil wrapped baked potato. That’s always a sure fire sign that the performances are going to be solid. And Mary and Shankdaddy were adorable as a teen and a tot respectively.
Russell/Noelle/Foxtrot/Eddie Simon (Baby [You’ve Got What It Takes]/Michael Buble) – Awww, Russell was so cute and skinny and he couldn’t sing at all. Cutest thing ever. I don’t care about Noelle at all. Kiddies, Russell getting the Foxtrot again was some bullshit. I did enjoy the introduction of yet another new choreographer. And admittedly, Noelle and Russell did very well with this. There was a particularly lovely turn sequence from Russell, some nice lifts, and Noelle had gorgeous lines. The rise and fall was not quite where it needed to be; the closed hold work could’ve been a little bit cleaner; and Russell’s shoulders were still a little stiff. But overall, that was spunky fun! And Russell and Noelle have some really good chemistry cooking, too. And you know how much I love when Mary drops the ballroom knowledge. Tracking with her feet. Hee. I don’t even know what that means, but I liked it.
Channing/Victor/Jazz/Tyce (Blackbird/Bobby McFerrin) – I don’t care about them, so I don’t care to recap who they were as kids. But I do love Tasty doing jazz. Noodles, I found this routine substantially more awesome than the judges did. The staging was clever. I enjoyed Bobby McFerrin’s version of this song almost enough to forgive him for Don’t Worry, Be Happy. And Tasty really brought an interesting quality of movement to the piece that was quietly evocative of our winged friends without being a caricature of hooting and squawking. At the same time, Channing and Victor both gave their most solid performances of the entire season. They were nicely synchronized on that series of turns and jumps. They got the rhythmical, syncopated movements just down pat. Darlings, I even felt they brought good performance quality, a feat which neither of them had quite mastered previously. And yes, it continues to be sad for us all that Channing doesn’t know how to do lifts. But on the whole, they rocked about as hard as these two can. And Tasty put his foot in that choreography. I’ll take it.
Ellenore/Ryan/Contemporary/Travis Wall (Your Ex-Lover’s Dead/Star) – Travis Wall!!!! Mmmmhmmm. Kittens, we have some perplexing questions to deal with from this pre-rehearsal footage. Why is Travis Wall all tatted up like a San Quentin inmate? Why was baby Ellenore wearing a full face of make up? Why is Ryan so ceaselessly uninteresting? Good questions all. Will we ever know the answers? Who knows, darlings? Who knows? As for the dance, it was money. Travis is turning into one of the best and most reliable choreographers this show has ever had. I don’t think he’s turned out a clunker of a piece yet, a feat which even the likes of Mia and Wade never accomplished. I don’t think this piece was Travis’ best work. But it was quietly beautiful. And Ellenore was amazing in it. Her legs and her lines and her fluidity, it was all so, so smashing. Ryan was good here, too. He really impressed me. They had lovely side by side work where they really communicated a sense of longing and connection and a whole ocean of back story solely through movements. They weren’t even looking at each other and yet you could tell that all of their attention and focus was trained on one another. Outstanding work by these two and deservedly praised.
Kathryn/Legacy/Paso Doble/Tony Meredith (Pursuit/Ka – Cirque du Soleil Cast Recording) – Usually, I dislike Tony without Melanie. He tends to get a touch too cutesy and trick heavy. But not tonight. Oh, no, kittens. Tonight, Tony brought his A game. And he gave us shirtless Legacy to which I can only say a hearty Hell Yeah! Join that navy, indeed. Shankdaddy always knows just how to put it right. But there’s more than just lust talking, noodles. These kids danced the hell out of that Paso. I think it might be my favorite Paso ever on this show. Legacy had astounding carriage and presence. And his feet pointed all the way through the pinky toe in some of those lifts? What? And Kathryn was magnificent. My god! She was sharp and fiery; smoldering might be an accurate description. Y’all, they destroyed that piece. Yes, they were a little off on the final lift sequence and pose, but I so did not care. They did so much better than they had any right to. I would like to see that again and again, wouldn’t you? Kathryn and Legacy are by far my favorite couple of the season, the only partnership with real chemistry that actually works well together (although Noelle/Russell is shaping up nicely). And who would’ve ever thought that? Go on with your bad selves. The Breaker and the High Talker were my couple of the night.
Performance night: Caboodle
Ashleigh/Jakob/Hip Hop/NappyTab (Whatcha Say/Jason Derulo) – Kittens, here’s a lesson in how distance from an event can subtly change our perceptions of what actually occurred because had I crafted this little recap directly after Tuesday’s performance show, this would’ve made my Kit list. I did not have high hopes for this pairing + hip hop, having witnessed the Dave Scott group dance last week. The two steps Dave let Ashley do she flubbed horribly, and I’m sorry, kiddies, you all know my Jakob love knows no limits, but his little dance battle with Legacy was embarrassing for him. He’s just too slight, too ethereal to be believable as a bad ass hip hop boy. So you can imagine that for the first time in a very, very long time, I was actually glad that a dancer I liked pulled NappyTab and I was praying for them to bring that watered down, non-hip hop pabulum that they do so well. Which, of course, they did. But why did it have to be a warmed over revision of Mark and Chelsie’s Bleeding Love (complete with the head thrashing that is the one moment that I flat out abhor in that number) and choreographed to a song which samples Imogen Heap’s Hide and Seek, a song that Mia Michaels and the S2 Top 6 just completely own forever and for all time on this show? What I’m saying is that the routine kind of sucked ass and Jakob and the Fug Princess were kind of not very good in it. They tried so hard to hit hard and to bring the hip hop flava that they went way, way, way over the top into cartoon character land. Especially FP. The angst faces! Darlings, kill me now. And the text messages on the screen? Why? Just Why? It all felt cheesy and inauthentic and like a total exercise in trying to hard. And my love for Jakob almost made me swallow that nasty concoction whole on Tuesday night. But in the cold light of day, I have to give a spanking to my dear, crazily talented boy. It wasn’t good. But hey, his Bye Bye Bye was awesome. There’s that.
Karen/Kevin/Broadway/Spencer Liff (If My Friends Could See Me Now/Christina Applegate-Sweet Charity Cast Recording) – So just to see if I’ve got this straight, the untrained salsa dancer studied Graham technique and the untrained krumper went to the Boston Arts Academy? Yeah, the show can move it all the way to the left with this untrained dancer hooha. I got your number. Like the last new Broadway choreographer, this new Broadway choreographer is a tenfold improvement over Tasty. See, kiddies. You can choreograph routines from Fosse shows that don’t wind up pitiful homages to Fosse. It’s not that complicated. Kevin is such a frustrating dancer because every now and again, he will pull off a move that takes your breath away. He busted out a beautiful, clean, controlled triple turn in that routine. And his kicks continue to be a revelation. But at the same time, he always looks like he’s going in front of a firing squad. Shoulders up around the ears indeed. In truth, the both of them were severely lacking in performance quality in this piece. They had all the steps down, but there was no oomph behind them. Everything needed to be bigger, broader, more pitched to the rafters and to the back of the house. They need to sell me more on the crazy joy of landing “Pow! Right in a pot of jam.” And I just didn’t feel it from them. It was a serviceable performance, but far from great. They looked like understudies up there.
Mollee and Nathan/Pop Jazz/LaurieAnn Gibson (Bad Romance/Lady Gaga) – These two are now and forever in the Caboodle section. Nathan is lost to me now. It’s like that gorgeous creature I saw in S5 auditions was just a mirage. I don’t know who this is, but whoever it is, he’s an ass. And he’s not all that as a dancer. (BTW, show. These kids don’t need “When I was young” stories. They are still infants) I actually wish BoomKat had given it to these annoying twats like I know she can. I’ve seen her break grown men and world weary whores like Aubrey O’Day on Diddy’s shows. I know she could have messed these kids up if she’d really cared to. And I, for one, would have loved it. Instead, she gave me whack ass remarks about hairs on her forearm (perhaps they escaped from her head?) and weaksauce choreography. And it was still a train wreck. I don’t know what the judges were watching, darlings, because what I saw was an unsynchronized mess of bodies in motion. And there was no feeling, no passion, no emotion, no connection to either the music or to each other. I could’ve been watching two wind up dolls out there. It was better than last week, I guess, but it could’ve hardly been worse, darlings. I really have no patience for this pair anymore. The sooner they both get sent packing, the better.
Results Night: Kit
Group Dance/Pop Jazz/Wade Robson (Aha!/Imogen Heap) – Russell turned it out again. I am loving this kid more and more. Ellenore, Jakob and Nathan were also beasts on that dance floor. The routine was quirky, fun and vaguely Mia-esque. Wade seems to be broadening his dance vocabulary. Which is a good and necessary thing. Imogen Heap needs to be given a rest on this show. I’m just saying. It was overall enjoyable, but Dave Scott’s piece last week was better. I do appreciate how Shankdaddy always remembers to shout out (or chastise) the choreographers, because as we soon came to find out with the solos, this show would be fuck all without them.
And that’s it for the kit, I’m afraid, kiddies. This week’s results show night was not the show's finest hour.
Results Night: Caboodle
Cat’s scary, scary fright make up. She looked like an undead, doily wrapped, sparkly short tie wearing crazy person. As Cat’s fashion goes, so goes the SYTYCD nation.
The judge babble. Bring back the guest judges. For the love of Debbie! I almost cried when I saw Miss Debbie Allen in the Dizzy Feet package. Why must we be punished for Paula’s whims, kittens? She was probably on her way walking to the studio when she got distracted by a shiny bottle cap. Who knows when she’ll ever make it to set? In the meantime, give me my damn guest judge because this crew is staler than three day old bread.
Newsflash: Wardrobe hos back on the crack. Trannys still angry. Film at 11:00. Noodles, what in the holy hell were these children wearing on results show night? Fug Princess is ugly enough without the hideous costuming. Who thought it was appropriate to give Victor Marcel waves? Not one, but two B3 dancers in shiny pleather leggings? And cultural differences be damned, every single person in that Bollywood number had on too much gold. I said it. What? You know, it’s kind of comforting to have the crack whores and trannys to kick around again. Aww, I’ve missed them, kittens.
Nakul Dev Mahajan and NDM Bollywood Dance Productions. I have enjoyed Nakul on many, many occasions. In general, the addition of Bollywood to the SYTYCDance pantheon has been a good thing. But that routine we saw on Wednesday night was a hot mess, no? I’ve seen my drunk uncles do that in the backyard after an afternoon spent in the sun playing dominoes and drinking too much MD 20/20. I don’t know if there were just too many of them out there or the choreography was just bad, but that looked sloppy, sloppy, seven ways sloppy. Tighten it up next time, Indian people. You have to rep harder than that.
Solos. Any of them. All of them. The contemporary kids were a festival of reaching out plaintively, flinging hair, throwing back flips and every other non-dance trick in the vilest book of all time. I wanted to hold them all close just so I could vomit down their backs. (Thank you, Sue Sylvester. A light unto us all) Karen did her best to keep up with the contempo kids in the Hair Flinging Nightmare Sweepstakes of America. And Kevin was boring. And the judges just lied to all of them, Mollee and Nathan most especially. They’ll never grow if people keep telling them their shit doesn’t stink. Noodles, I’m exhausted by that whole crew. They could’ve all gone home last night, and taken FP with them while they were at it. And wouldn’t we have been left with a much more enjoyable show if they had?
Head ‘em Up, Move ‘em Out
So Kevin and Channing are out. Both of them underperformed tremendously while on the show. I think in the real world they could both have decent careers, Kevin probably more so than Channing, who suffers from extreme personality deficit. Neither of them was I sorry to see go home, although I do lament that the judges didn’t take the opportunity to boot the odious Mollee when they had the chance. And now I think I’ll have to start calling her The Odious Mollee all the time, kiddies. She’s so, so stank. Maybe next week, Brian Friedman will come back in his crazier persona and create one of his out there routines which only I ever seem to like and she and Nathan will hit B3 again, the judges will finally realize that all of America hates her and that she is an albatross around the neck of their potential golden boy Nathan and send her silly ass home. Look how Noelle has blossomed away from her sphere of influence. A girl can dream, can’t she?
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