"SYTYCD" Season 8: Elimination 3

July 7, 2011

After all the ridiculous drama of the elimination that wasn’t, and then the doom and gloom of last week’s double elimination, we were kind of assuming that we’d be bored silly by this week’s back to life, back to reality elimination. Happily, it turned out to be pretty darn fun. We laughed, the dancers cried, and everyone, for the most part, had a good time.

Here are our top three awesome—and awkward—happenings from last night.

AWESOME

1) The opening Bollywood group number. Oh, Bollywood. How can we resist your delicious cheesiness? Actually, let’s run with this metaphor for a second. Bollywood is like (fine, now it’s a simile) Velveeta: It’s almost shockingly tangy and colorful; it’s like nothing found in nature; and we’d be ashamed to admit we liked it if it didn’t make us so happy. Also, were the rainbow-colored costumes a shoutout to New York’s recent gay marriage triumph? Probably not, but we’re going to pretend so.

2) Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet. Talk about a class act. Ebony Williams is our hero. And yay for amazing concert dance that actually translates well to television!

3) Cat Deeley’s outfit. Who but Cat can take a disco ball of a New Year’s Eve minidress, funk it up with a wrestling-championship belt and some big ol’ dominatrix heels, and make the whole ensemble seem so fresh and summery??

AWKWARD

1) Florence and the Machine’s performance. Not that we don’t love Ms. Welch (and her machine), and she did look be-yew-ti-ful, but her act confused us. She’s done such AWESOME things with dancers before—why wouldn’t she use dancers on a dance show, for goodness’ sake? Was TWall really too busy guest judging to whip up some choreo for her?

2) Pretty much every one of the “dance for your life” solos. Ugh, you guys. Nigel was right: We’re tired of seeing you do the same old song and dance week after week. Show us how versatile you are! We’re looking at you in particular, Jordan: It’s time to stop with the HIGH-WATTAGE SEXY. And the secabesque developpés. And the embellished bra tops.

3) Having Cedar Lake perform right after a bunch of those lackluster “dance for your life” solos. It’s funny—we’ve always thought of “SYTYCD” as a sort of feeder for companies like Cedar Lake. (Remember when Sabra was a Cedar Laker for about 5 minutes?) But after watching the “SYTYCD” contestants and CL perform back to back, we’re suddenly noticing the subtle (and not-so-subtle—you won’t be seeing the CLers wink at you anytime soon) nuances that make the Cedar Lake dancers far more sophisticated artists. We love our “SYTYCD” kids, but they have some growing to do.

In the end, we said goodbye to Ashley and Chris. That seemed about right, given that the only note we made during Ashley’s solo was “pretty skirt,” and that we weren’t exactly sure who Chris was until this week. But we’re excited about the remaining contestants. They’re a strong, talented bunch, particularly the ladies. Y’all better bring it next week!

What do you guys think? Are we crazy? Are we saying all the things you’re too nice to say? (Both?) Share your thoughts with us on Twitter
@Dance_SpiritMag
and on the DS Facebook page!