So You Think You Can Dance for the Pros?

So You Think You Can Dance for the Pros? by Roxanne McDonald

Mia Michaels, Mary Murphy, and Shane Sparks take the dancing hopefuls through the steps of group performing, and put the maybes through an additional dance for your life test.

190 have made it through to Vegas. Now for the closer scrutiny of collaborative efforts and ability to follow the teachings of the pros.

Dancer/choreographer Shane Sparks works with the first group of groups; dancer/choreographer Mary Murphy teaches the remaining group the Samba; and dancer/choreographer Mia Michaels leads the third remaining cluster in contemporary.

After each smaller group performs, more cuts are made. After Shane’s round, sixty-two hopefuls are leaving Las

Vegas; once Mary completes her lessons, within twenty-four hours of the dancers arriving in Vegas, almost half are gone; and after the contemporary routine with Mia, the numbers go down to sixty-three semi-semi-semi-finalists.

After all that expert help, the remaining dancers are clustered into groups of four or five, and given a box of CDs to choose a piece of music/dance style from.

Caitlin and Jay and Pasha and Janet are featured, as are Yessy, the girl who worked so hard to conceal her size, notes Nigel, and the baby oil diva, Jessi.

One dancer is shown during Mia’s routine, and heard to say this is “the hardest thing [he’s] ever done.” Another, Kayley, is paired with Jay, and when he makes it through and she doesn’t, he tells us he had to drag her all around the dance floor and she tells us he didn’t have to dog her out on national television.

We of course also hear how many “want this so bad” and how cruel the rejection is after x number of trials and tribulations: Hannah-Lee has another injury, which impacts her dancing for her life routine (though I though it was clever she chose the “broken” music/theme); Faima is getting

ragged on by her co-dancers, who are impatient with her questions and what they see as stalling tactics or sabotaging efforts.

Some make it through every “dance for your life” bit but can’t do any alternate styles, says Nigel. Others blow the judges away so much that they can only exclaim “wow”, “extraordinary”, and “beautiful”, about dance performances like that of Ricky Palomino, who is so impressive Mia whispers to Shane, “Where did he come from?”
And Jesse or Jessi Peralta closes the fourth installment of “So You Think You Can Dance?” not with baby oil but with a pantomiming contemporary bit that that has the judges determining she “defines” performance, as the “sickest” female on the show.

On to the top 20….

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