So You Think You Can Dance: Kelly Bundy and the Top 6 |
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| Written by Lauren Cheal |
| Wednesday, 10 August 2011 15:58 |
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Cat Deely is wearing some truly huge shoes tonight. How fun. We are down to the top 6, including the unlikely Ricky and Caitlynn. Guest judges tonight are Christina Applegate (apparently a Tony winner?) and Lil C. Melanie and Twitch: Lame Hip Hop by Tabitha and Napolean After seeing what Sasha was able to do with Twitch, I am excited to see how Melanie holds up. I don’t know if we have seen her do hip hop yet. The routine is ok. I don’t think I have ever said that about a Melanie routine before. She is decently convincing in the hip hop role and with the moves, but the routine is pretty slow and not very interesting. Melanie is also wearing a weird oversized hood thing (there was a dumb Little Red Riding Hood theme) that ends up looking like a neck brace. Lil C congratulates Melanie for getting through the routine, but thinks she didn’t have it at the beginning of the routine. Kelly Bundy tells Melanie that she is a big fan of hers, and thinks she did pretty well. Mary Murphy says something, but she is wearing a really low-cut dress and her orange boobs are distracting me. Nigel thinks Melanie is good at everything. Sasha and Kent: ? by Tyce DiOrio Tyce has really been not great lately, but we’ll see if this piece turns it around. The dance uses a big painted wall that the dancers leap off of and climb up at various times. It is interesting, and the emotion of the dance is impressive. I am still not in love with all of the choreography, but it is better than recent showings from Tyce. Christina sums up Sasha’s talent by saying that she breaks people’s hearts with her movement. Mary says things and starts to cry, but I just can’t stop looking at her chest. Nigel says something incoherent about Sasha’s “emotion life”. The feedback is positive. Lil C is trying not to cry and kind of failing. This routine clearly touched the judges, and I give Sasha props for that. Marko and Janette: Paso Doble by Dmitry Chaplin I understand why they have the ballroom dances in this show, but they really tend to just kill the excitement of the room. This one is fine…nothing too special. There is an interesting series of lifts where Marko kind of throws Janette around his shoulder a few times in a row. Other than that, I am a little bored. Mary wants to dance with Marko, and their matching outfits would make that quite fun (Mary’s dress has bedazzled epaulets). She also really liked the lift I pointed out. Nigel wasn’t in love with the dance—he didn’t think it was a great lead-in to the finale, and I agree. Lil C liked Marko’s performance and connection to the piece. Jesse (see what I am doing here?) is a big fan of Marko’s, but wanted a bit more from his crotch region. I just don’t know how to explain what she was talking about. As Cat so eloquently put it, “Same story, different day”. Tadd and Ellenore: Sonya Tayeh (she gets to be her own style now) Tadd is wearing a strange costume, and that should have been my hint that the routine was by Sonya. He looks a bit like a ringmaster. The dance uses this really cool prop that is a chandelier that the two dancers take turns swinging from. Sonya uses the prop very wisely and it doesn’t come off as a gimmick. Nigel is pretty speechless about the routine, but wishes there was a bit more dancing (I agree that it ended suddenly, and felt like it was building to something bigger that never came). Lil C wanted Tadd to draw out some of the movements a little bit further. Veronica Corningstone wants the two dancers to get a room. Mary is impressed with Sonya’s courage in trying new things. Ricky and Jaimie: Dee Caspary Ricky is using two sticks in this routine to sort of conduct Jaimie’s movements, and it mostly works well. The sticks exaggerate the movements of Ricky’s arms and draw attention to the control. As my viewing partner, who we have decided to call The Peanut Gallery, points out, Lady Gaga would not like the sticks because his hands should be creating the movements. I did like the routine, and would put it among my favorites for Ricky for the whole season. Lil C busts out some sort of haiku for Ricky. Bil Shakespeare would be so proud. Samantha Who? tells Ricky that he could do a little more in his emotions. Nigel repeats his weekly critique of Ricky that he needs to dance lower into the ground. Caitlynn and Pasha: Samba by Dmity Chaplin If Caitlynn can’t be interesting with Pasha, the girl is doomed. Good lord, even Pasha looks bored with Caitlynn—while he is dancing with her. Bring back Jordan! I am sure the technique was fine, but the dance was super boring (or at least Caitlynn’s side of it). Christina is really an entertaining judge here…I don’t think I can recap it in a way that will do her justice, but she makes some fun jokes. Mary thought the technique was great, but her face was a little bit crazy. Nigel and Lil C agree and say her face was just too much. Sasha and Ricky: Whacking by Kumari Suraj Whacking is something we have never heard of and something we probably will never hear about again. I shan’t try to explain it. Judging from their routine, it seems to be lame campy hip hop. Sasha could sell 2 minutes of the running man, and thus comes out of this odd routine ok. Ricky looks awkward, and the style doesn’t suit him. Mary tells us that this version didn’t compare to her new favourite Whacking dancer, Princess Lockaroo, but they did ok. She says Princess Lockaroo twice, which cracks me up. Nigel gives Ricky a critique and praises Sasha. Lil C wishes they could have enjoyed the style a bit more. Rachel’s ditzy sister from Friends (I am stretching here) thought they could have “whacked it harder”, fully aware of how horrible that sounds. Melanie and Tadd: Broadway by Spencer Liff This is a big story within a story, and it sounds tiring when Spence takes fifteen minutes to explain it before they have even started. Melanie is pretty great in this routine (and her solo was also really cool), and they dance in front of a big mirror, which is both cool and sometimes distracting. I found myself watching what was in the mirror a little bit more than the dancers, but perhaps that was the point. It mostly worked for me. Tadd is more like a prop in the dance, but I don’t mind. Nigel comments on Melanie’s crazy solo before praising her acting and true emotion in the dance. He tells Tadd that he didn’t suck in comparison to Melanie, which is (apparently) a big compliment. Lil C talks about Melanie’s quiet fire (I think they make an antibiotic for that). He tells Tadd he is good. Christina (I am out of names) doesn’t know what to say to Melanie, she is amazing. Tadd has a better *fancydanceterm* than most ballerinas. Mary gets choked up at how awesome Melanie is. She really said it to both of them, but we all know she was talking to Melanie. Caitlynn and Marko: Jazz by Sonya Tayeh You just know that Sonya wishes she had either Sasha or Melanie instead of Caitlynn. Caitlynn really does come across as the prop (the “Tadd”, if you will) in this one. The routine is really strong…fairly normal by Tayeh standards, but I really only watched Marko. Lil C calls the routine “double hashtag bucc”. That is a good thing, for those not familiar with Lil C-ese. Lil Cs. Kelly Bundy tells Marko that he is the beast of the dudes, and Caitlynn finally came out of her shell and performed well. Mary thinks that Caitlynn had a break through. I get that they have to say this stuff to make it seem like there is a chance Caitlynn will make it into the finals, but it is clearly a lie. Nigel slams Sonya’s previous routine again (which is annoying), by way of complimenting this one. More Voltas:
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Comments (2)
Princess Lockaroo
Showed up for auditions and I thought she was just another crazypants, but that's evidently an actual style, like a really specific style of disco I think? It's stupid though. It's like they hobbled Sasha with it because they realized Melanie would suck at hip hop. Which , I'm sorry, she did. She pulled it off with her "acting" because it was such an elaborate set piece, but the dancing was not good.
For sure
I have really come to dislike Tabitha and Napolean's stuff this year, so I was more focused on why I didn't like the choreography, but I agree that Melanie was pretty weak in the dance too. Props to Sasha for selling a really odd dance, and you are right that they seemed to handicap her with it. |
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