So You Think You Can Dance Despite the Brain Damage?

So You Think You Can Dance Despite the Brain Damage? by Roxanne McDonald

The New York auditions episode 1 of season 3 is hilarious and heart-breaking at once.

“I’ve promised I’m not going to be mean this season,” is Nigel’s challenge to himself. But about halfway through day one of the New York auditions, he can’t help but falter and fall back on that acerbic with that which of course goes right over most of those dancing heads.

The Good

Anya Garnis and Pasha Govalev do a hip, tight, and spot-on number, one that Nigel says was soooo hot and Mary says was “the best ballroom dance we’ve ever seen.” You really could watch these two for hours. Well, for many minutes, anyway.

Heather Zampier is one of the first sob stories turned tale of courage and determination and all that: after two hip surgeries (to remediate bone spurs—ouch), she is told she will never dance again. After she does a decent contemporary dance (I know very little about dance and even less about contempo) Nigel confirms what the doctors says. Heather says yes, and Nigel says, “What do they know?” Mary agrees, saying Heather was awesome and a miracle, and Dan comments on the fire, the technique, and, especially, Heather’s personality to match.

Hannah-Lee Sakakibara, you might think, would go in another category, here, for when she was working a dance hall, the floor collapsed—killing twenty four people and seriously hurting many others, her included. She had a broken nose, a broken jaw, and they thought she might even have brain damage.

But Hannah-Lee is not in the wrong compartment: she prayed in that hospital that if she could make it out of there, she would dance for the rest of her life. And dance she does. One judge, Dan, maybe, says she doesn’t have the physical stamina, though, to make it through even one dance. Mary wants to see how she would do in the choreography round. Nigel does, too, so she is sent to that “smelly” room (as Cat) calls it, to await her fate. She does get through, evidently, though I didn’t see her do so.

Ashley Keegan dances under the tutelage of Katie Watts. Both are auditioning, and we again get a little nervous about the “teacher” and her performance. But after Ashley kicks up a sexy storm, which Nigel says with wide-eyed joy (who can blame him? This hetero viewer was getting hot and bothered, too!) that she “has all the qualities she needs to be a good dancer,” and Dan says is “great to watch,” and Mary says was a “great audition,” the teacher comes out and wows

them almost as much. Katie does a really unique modern dance, and Mary calls her a “very special dancer;” Dan says even though she doesn’t have the “God-given” long legs that Ashley has she has done pretty well with what she’s got; and Nigel admits it is an honor and a joy to have a dance teacher who has turned out a great dancer in Ashley and has done well herself.

The Bad

Tiffany Green is overweight, half-leaping and spinning awkwardly and rolling around on the floor with little technique, and, when she finishes her routine, still has what Nigel has said he dreads watching: the “fat still bobbling.” The judges quietly tell her that it really wasn’t that good, so she tells us in the exit interview that she has a fall-back plan: to just open a restaurant.

Chasmer “creative in everything he does” Well might just want to work for Tiffany. He is stymied and stale, and Nigel, still trying not to “be mean” says he really wasn’t good. Mary and Dan agree, and Mary gives the kid some advice he likely won’t take with him to the door.

The Brain-damaged

“Dancing Derrick” Bradley does a spastic, rubbery arms aflailing performance, then collapses dramatically in front of the judges. Nigel notes how on his bio he says he can dance for a long time without getting tired, but, “Derrick, you look tired to me,” Nigel says. Mary says it was not dancing—just a lot of jumping up and down; and Dan jokes that Derrick would be the life of the party.”

Carmen E. Lugo and Joel Barnabel are “just friends.” Well, that’s what the ex-girlfriend says, but not what the still drippy with devotion Joel says for Carmen, who is auditioning with his help. They do an awkward ballroom number, with her seeming to try to yank him about while he appears to sometimes hope to take control and other times reveal his wish to be her bitch.

The judges are bopping and swinging in their seats in mock enjoyment, and when the two stop their thing, Mary says there was no connection, and everything about it was dreadful, and Dan says he didn’t feel anything from it. Nigel asks what Carmen does for a living, and when she says she is a dance instructor (another one?!), he gets this “Oh-oh” look and even says it, I think. She continues, saying how one day her dad brought her the paper with the want ads and said this is what you outta do: Dance Instructor. No experience required.

You can see Nigel is gonna have to put lots of pennies in the swear jar, as he has all he can do to keep from leaping onstage and throttling her. Mary tells Carmen that she is “not into reality, at all.” At all.

This leads us to the next (but surely not the last) candidate for Deluded Dance 101: Sex. Yep, that’s his self-assigned moniker. Dave Kenneth Stoller is back, having brought his part geek/part freak routine to the stage last year. He brags and builds up his newly acquired acumen to Cat Deeley, then takes his convulsing and writhing—in shorts, sweatshirt, and driving gloves?—to the overburdened judges.

Then the mother gets in on the act—well, the counterattack—saying how no one can steal dreams from the dreamer. Nigel bluntly explains how she is allowing her son to remain just that, delusional, and after a lot of back and forth know-it-all pride for her puppy talk, champions her son right out the rejection door, as Nigel says an oh, by the way comment, saying, “Please, the two of you, don’t come back again next year.”
Nigel has stepped up his presence, it seems, and while he has promised to be less mean, can’t help himself: He tells one young hopeless, Melissa Brown, that “If we were doing a sit-com, you’d be great at the dancing version of ‘Ugly Betty’.” He tells another, who wants to be a forensic something (at least she doesn’t say dancer) that she just created the crime scene behind her.

Besides attempting (and failing) to avoid cruelty this season, Nigel also notes the terms and/or calls for such techniques as the arabesque, the pirouette, the Russian jete, using these to call those who boast mastery but don’t know diddly but insist on diddling away the judges valuable time.

That brings us to my favorite auditioner, Jamar Weaver. He follows his buddy, E-Knock Phillips, who was good enough to get the “first Mary scream of the season,” Nigel says (but who ends up getting cut for lack of training). Jamar is big and cumbersome in movement, and even though he’s been dancing since he was little, his fleshy, sort of bumbly all over the place technique doesn’t sit right with the judges. Mary questions whether Jamar has done whatever or is following a choreographed routine. Jamar responds that it is a kind of combination of styles from his “studio”—where they do swing, jazz, etc.

Mary asks if it’s his own stuff or if it’s choreography, and he says it’s stuff from their studio where they also do swing, jazz, and other stuff. Nigel asks him to work up a quick swing routine, and when Jamar seems surprised, he says you do swing, don’t you? And his reply is, “Sorta.” He’s instructed to get a partner to learn a swing dance with and then come back in a little bit.

This is the cue for Nigel to give Jamar a second test (you know, the way Simon does when a singer says he can’t sing well because he has to pee, and Simon gives the kid a chance to prove the empty bladder makes for a true diva): Nigel tells him to go out in the hall, work up a quick swing routine, and then come back.

Jamar looks like his bluff has been called. But a few auditions later, here’s Jamar again, still big, stuffed clothing a flopping and a flying, snapping his fingers for what seems like forever. Mary gets to cackling and Nigel is about to pat himself on the back, when Jamar says he is waiting for the (intro music to transition to) the dda-da-da-da-dum-dum. They start from the top, Jamar sets to snapping again, and just as we think he is going to be a candidate for the Booby Award at the finals, he whips into a full, aggressive, wildly nostalgic swing!

Nigel says, “We sit here all day…. Sometimes we put up with a load of rubbish, sometimes we put up with a load of abuse. But every once in a while, a star shows up. You, sir, are a star.”

Go Jamar…all the way to the finals. Please.

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