SYTYCD S7 Ep9 On Front Street

Do you hear the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, noodles? They must be close because TBC has flipped the script and become my favorite dancer this season, Tyce produced a Broadway routine that was not complete and utter crap without even an ounce of redeeming value, Mandy Moore produced a better dance routine than Travis Wall, the trick happy ballroom choreographers made me long for the subtlety of Alex da Silva, the choreographers continue to attempt to murder this season’s contestants one by one like villains in an Agatha Christie novel, and Cat and her pulled from 1971 fishtail braid were kind of annoying last night. Kittens, it’s the end of the world as we know it. But do we feel fine? Let’s find out.

Many, many of these dancers got totally exposed last night. There was some blood on that dance floor. There were honestly only two dancers who survived both routines unscathed last night, and they’re the two who are the two who have any chance at winning the show this season, Kent and Lauren (still blonde but significantly less annoyingly toothy and cheerleader-ish).

Exposed – Lauren got a big ole butt (Oh, yeah)

I’m mad at the judges putting a Tahitian dance on the show. Yes, I realize that unlike “African jazz” or “Lyrical”, Polynesian dancing is an actual thing. But the point, darlings, is that no one on the show, not the judges, not the contestants, not the audience, knows what it should look like. So how can we judge the quality of the performance? TBC shook her moneymaker for all she was worth and to my mind, it looked more like the Beyonce booty shake from Crazy in Love than something I’d see at the Maui Hilton, but what do I know? Exactly, noodles. So there was a dance. There were a lot of hips and knees and shaking. Mark looked amazing all naked from the waist up and covered in tribal tattoos (Thanks, crackhos!). The judges didn’t know what to say about the performance which took Nigel right to the creepy perv place and it was just as ewwww and awkward as ever. The choreographer wore a flower in her hair and OK, Polynesian people we get it. You are a tropical people. Stop with the flowers. And then it was all over. I don’t know, kiddies, unless I’m watching The Brady Bunch episode where they all go to Hawaii, I really don’t need to see modified hula on my TV screen.

Luckily, Mandy rode to the rescue, with her tennis shoe props and laid it down. Best routine of the night, noodles! How can one not groove to Boogie Shoes? Family, TBC turned it out here. Funky, funky white girl. That bouncy, side by side groove she had going with Billy? So much fun. Surprise! I love this girl a really lot. She’s leapfrogged both Billy and Kent as my number one choice to win it all. Which of course means that she won’t. But a girl can dream, no?

Exposed – You can take the boy out of the bell tower, but you can’t take the Hunchback out of the boy.

So this is ostensibly about Kent, but due to the fatal flaw of the season, the inclusion of “all star” dancers, we must, must deal with the Neil situation. The Hunchback was back in full effect in that Tyce Broadway piece. (And at the very least, he didn’t go with Chicago. Probably only because Joey got there first, but still) The bad posture? Check. Lack of musicality? Check. Lack of transitions between tumbling passes? Check? Inability to not fall out of even simple double turns? Check. Nigel was right that Kent looked like the all star in that routine, but primarily because Neil looked so, so bad. The routine was not good. But it’s Tasty and it was Broadway, so what could one expect?

Kent danced well last night, but he was not well served by his choreographers. We did not enjoy the Dee Casprey contemporary, noodles. Too much business with the stupid chairs. Too much quirk and crimp with the movements. The boys barely had a chance to live and breathe through the moves before Dee’s mad choreo put them into another broken down doll position. Kent delivered as well as he could. He’s a marvelous technician. And he has been doing better at turning off the Wapokeneta Kid persona. I still like him and think he could win. And I’d be OK with that. But he’s definitely slipped to second for me.

Exposed – Billy Bell is a great contemporary dancer and that’s really about it.

Kittens, Billy was not made for this competition. Not that many could have rescued a jive choreographed to Paradise by the Dashboard Light. (Et tu, Louis?) But still, it wasn’t very good. As long as he and Anya were doing side by side work, he was passable, although what he was doing didn’t look very much like jive, but the closed hold work was excrable. Darlings, this boy is just not built for ballroom. Contrast the kind of fish out of water performance he turned in for that ballroom with his fine work in Mandy’s jazz piece. I never knew that little white boy had that much soul. Grooving through those bouncy steps, knees akimbo. Plucking out some groovy air guitar. There were even a few believably saucy pelvic thrusts. And as Shankdaddy pointed out, he looked like he was having fun and enjoying himself for one of the first times ever on this show. As much as I wanted Billy to make top 10, I now don’t believe that this format is the right way to showcase his abundance of gifts. Somehow, his particular brand of genius, so alien, so almost delicately twisted, doesn’t easily translate. I have no doubt he’ll be hugely successful in the real world of dance. But I highly doubt he’ll come close to sniffing the S7 crown. Nor should he, kiddies. I love him, but not for this show.

Exposed – Robert still dances like a competition kid and the judges fucking love dead or sick people

Sigh. I can’t anymore with Robert, kiddies. Yes, he’s taken the mugging down about 1000 notches. Yes, he’s got a solid foundation of technique and training. But he’s the most no there there dancer I’ve ever seen. Let’s start by acknowledging that Travis’ choreography, and his fine use of one of the only Coldplay songs I can stomach, Fix You, was lovely. Let’s also acknowledge, noodles, that the routine was far from the best of this or any other season. Hell, it wasn’t even the best of the night. But as ever since Mia unleashed the unholy Dead Daddy Dance on an unsuspecting world, it’s become illegal to critique a dance which deals with death, disease or illness in any way, the judges all decided to pretend that there hadn’t been someone named Alex Wong on the show not more than two short weeks ago. OK, judges. Not everyone has short term memory loss. Now let’s talk about Allison, who was divine in this piece. She is a wonder and a revelation and it still chaps my ass that she didn’t even make top 6 in her season. Not even top 6. Hang your heads, America! Bitches. Now, we can talk about Robert, who was more than competent in the piece, but disappeared when compared with the brilliance that was Allison. She pulled focus from him despite the fact that the Trannys in hair and make up gave her pickaninnie braids. The only part where Robert really stood out was at the end when he was walking with Allison on top of his feet. Lovely. Really lovely.

Kittens, weren’t you praying that we’d get through an entire season without Doriana? I know. I know. But there she was, with Robert and Ashley. Doing her same trick overload as ever. And this time, she actually managed to take one of the dancers out, which I’m amazed hasn’t happened before. The routine was crap, trick after trick after trick, leaving little time for the dancers to, you know, dance. I hated it, darlings. Haaaatttteeee. Not even Kathryn could save it. And Mia nailed it when she noted how light Robert was dancing. His center is so lacking. He’s not grounded enough, not dancing with his core engaged. And therefore, he just looks inconsequential in his dancing. I wish these studios would spend more time on barre work, on fundamentals with these kids. Yes, plie and up, releve and down does get boring after a while. It also helps you become the kind of dancer who doesn’t stumble through every single transition in a routine. About suffering, they were never wrong, the old masters.

Exposed – Retina burning fashion saps a dancer’s mojo

White mesh, long sleeve shirt cut down to the navel with lime green sequined trim on collar, cuffs and button plackets? Really, crackhos? Really? Poor Adechike. Not only did he funk up the place with that tired salsa, he looked insane. And the blue pants were a little too big, too loose. Kind of like those modern day baseball players who wear their uniforms so big that they kind of look like they are wearing PJs. Some things are just made to be tight, kittens. Baseball uniforms. Ballroom dance pants. The routine was difficult, the kind of nonsense choreography that is difficult and trick heavy purely for the sake of proving that the choreographer can throw in a lot of tricks with no thought given to how that will actually look on the dancers’ bodies even should they be able to pull all of the tricks off. So Adechike and Any were game, and they did, in fact, manage to throw all the tricks in the routine, thanks mainly to Anya who refused to miss on a couple of the dicier elements. But there was very little dance in that dance. It was all throw, lift, tricky turn with hand positions, trick, throw, trick, back bend. I hated the choreography a lot. Adechike was bad in it. That’s about the size of it. I think my salsa teacher at the local community college could’ve put together a better routine.

Back to another poorly choreographed routine. Like Kent, Adechike’s choreographers kind of let him down this week, although Kent was still able to put in two solid performances. Anyway, Adechike was there. Chairs were there. He did a gorgeous stag leap that rose for days and days. It was fine. He was fine. Boring as spit, which is something of a theme with this year’s contestants. The judges tripped over themselves to not come off like crazy racist haters, but this week, darlings? Adechike wasn’t good so the critique would’ve been warranted.

Exposed – Jose is a mediocre B-boy at best

Dom took that fool to school on that breaking routine that he and Legacy and the other real breaker in the room so clearly choreographed. There was no comparison between Dom’s freezes and other power moves and Jose’s. No comparison between Dom’s flares and Jose’s flares. Hell, not even any room to compare Dom’s uprocks and Jose’s. The kid is just not that great as a b-boy. And the judges all knew it. Adam and Mia tried to damn with very faint praise, but kiddies, don’t you wish they would stop treating Jose like a special needs breaker? He’s a big boy. He came on this show of his own free will, ostensibly to improve as a dancer and what has he gotten out of the experience? A whole lot of uncalled for tongue baths and sad faces when forced to say anything even remotely negative about him. And someone please get this kid away from Cat because she turns into someone completely creepy and spectacularly annoying whenever he’s around. He’s a kind of cute little latino boy who’s an alright dancer, not the Messiah in a doo rag. Damn.

I’m gonna give Joey a pass on the uninspiring Broadway because look at what she had to work with. Jose is just limited. If she’d given Courtney more to do than just walk around waving a big old fan, Jose’s technique would’ve been even more on blast than it already was. And let’s pause and contemplate, noodles, that this was, in my humble opinion, his best performance outside his genre on the show to date. Chew on that, kiddies. Right on schedule, the judges decided to de-pimp their former pet lest he grow into a monster who takes out one of their chosen favorites (Kent/Lauren). A day late and a dollar short as usual.

Exposed – Ashley is so nondescript I forgot her even on a performance show where she suffered a very dramatic accident and was possibly forced from the competition for good

Kittens, I sat for at least five minutes wracking my brain trying to remember who I was missing before it hit me. I hope Ashley’s not been waylaid by Doriana. As I said last week, most of the choreographers on this show need to learn that even though a dancer can do something doesn’t mean that they should. I wish the fallen injured from across all seasons would band together and file a class action suit against Unca Nigel and company, all “Larry Parker got me $2.5 million” on their asses. And I’d still probably forget that Ashley was part of the suit.

Exposed – This show may become TBC and her Manwhores after tonight’s elimination

And then there was one? Could be, kittens. Could be. Personally, I’m pulling for the Jose boot, although once again he may mystifyingly escape B3. If Adechike hits B3 again tonight, I doubt the judges will save him as they not so secretly hate him. They might not save Robert either, even though they adore him, if he hits B3. No one but me seems to still be on the Billy love train, so he could also wind up B3. If Ashley can go next week, I’ve no doubt the judges will save her because all male-male dances all the time will not be cool with Nigel. I’ll put my money on Adechike seeing the end of the road tonight, though by rights, it should be Jose