We’re back! It’s dancing time!

So, obviously, I missed last week’s recap due to an abundance of dresser jumping competitions and late night ice cream trips in my life. I did watch it, however, and I would like to get a few thoughts out before we proceed with the top 8.

- Booooo to Comfort being back.
- Booooo to Gev going home, although I don’t know what else could have happened. It’s just a matter of which white boy goes first this season.
- Yay to Kherington going home! I have never been on the Kherington train, at all, ever, and I think the right person went home. At least Comfort was good in the hip hop routine.
- Is it obvious to anyone else how set up this show is? I don’t care, really, but seriously y’all. Will and Katee are partnered AND they get the pas de duex? Really? No way they were giving that one to Comfort. It’s just so obvious who they want us to like. Boo.

Okay! Whew. I feel better. On with the show!

PERFORMANCE SHOW

Cat looks great tonight, finally. No insanity on the dress and her hair is awesome.

Jidges! Guest judge this week is Toni Basil, who I have never heard of but I hope is as crazy as she looks. Oh! She sang Mickey! Awesome.

Let’s dance!

Will and Courtney are partners and they draw hip hop and samba. The samba is up first. I feel like we’ve seen Courtney do a ton of latin ballroom this season.

They look great, her in a fringy yellow thing and him in black mesh. Yes. I think they technically perform it well, and Courtney has the attitude and personality required, but I’m not so much feeling it from Will. He looks great and does everything right, but he’s jut not selling it to me. It feels forced. It looks good and is fun, but I just feel like it was missing something. They do this really crazy lift/spin thing though, where she is like laying on his shoulder and he’s not holding on to her at all. Scary.

Nigel says they were fantastic when they weren’t thinking about it but that it showed when they were trying too hard. Mary asks where Ashton is, because she thinks she’s being punked by looking at two contemporary dancers who have become salsa dancers. Why do they let her talk? Toni thought they were great because she forgot to remember to judge. Or something.

Our first solo is Comfort, who does exactly what she’s done in every solo you’ve ever seen from her. I would tell you more, but I fell asleep.

Katee and Twitch get contemporary and broadway. Really? Seriously. I think Katee has done broadway every single week. Their contemporary is with Mia Michaels, of course, so they are safe for sure. There are like eight people in the studio with them for rehearsals. Who are they? What are they doing?

This routine, of course, is awesome. He is like a loser boyfriend and she is a crazy girlfriend and they are amazing. There’s a door onstage that they keep busting through and slamming and there’s a portion in the middle where it’s closed and they are both dancing against it… it’s great. I love it.

Nigel calls them captivating and says the performance was one of the most entertaining ever on the show. Mary does a knock knock joke and then I press mute so I don’t know what else happens. Toni calls Mia the queen of contemporary dance and calls it beautiful and amazing. She also didn’t take notes on this one, so she is rocking the judging so far.

Will comes out for his solo in a suit and James Brown wig. At one point he jumps about three stories high and lands in the splits. It’s pretty much awesome.

Mark and Comfort are partners, which does not bode well for my boyfriend. They draw foxtrot and hip hop. That also does not bode well. They are starting with a NapTab hip hop routine about being in detention. I am nervous.

Ok, y’all, I did not expect to like this. At all. But! I really did! Comfort is definitely better than Mark, but I think he holds his own. He hits it hard and pulls it off, I think. They start out in desks and do some cool seated choreography, then bust out into the main section of the routine. They do this lift thing where she is laying on the ground and somehow he picks her up and flips her twice and she flies up over his head. Insane.

Nigel says Comfort was absolutely incredible but wonders why she can’t transfer that into her solos. He says Mark was really good and praises the lift thing I mentioned. Aw, you guys, I actually got a little teary there. I was sure he was going to slam my boyfriend Mark. Mary says they did a great job and liked the desk choreography. Me too! Toni starts talking about the underpinning of street dancing and calls them rooted in the beat and joyful and she is crazy, y’all.

What is this upside down three-finger salute thing they keep doing? I am so uncool.

Katee solos to Celine Dion, which, no, and she is pretty boring. Why don’t they give her the same talk about solos and choreography that they just gave Comfort?

Our last couple is Joshua and Chelsie, and they pull the argentine tango and disco. Dmitri is choreographing a 20s style tango for them about secret dancing at parties. We see lots of footage of them fighting with each other. It’s cute. I like them.

They look great, her in the blue fringy version of Courtney’s yellow fringy thing from earlier, and Joshua in all black and white shirtsleeves. It’s slow at first, but pretty sexy, and it really picks up as they go. I totally buy the idea that they dancing where they’re not supposed to be and it’s all secret and forbidden. I don’t know much about the tango, and there aren’t a lot of tricks, but it’s fun to watch and I think they totally pull it off. Two thumbs up.

Nigel praises Chelsie’s legs, of course, and spends some time talking about Joshua’s butt. He thought they had good chemistry and enjoyed watching them. Mary says they nailed the mood of the routine and they really pulled it off. Toni calls it street, or something, and says they made it look spontaneous. She enjoyed it.

Mark’s solo is pretty random… it doesn’t look much like dancing but he’s super fun and he slides his whole body all over the place at the end. He’s so cute.

Next up we have Will and Courtney’s hip hop with Tabitha and Napoleon, who pretty much admit that they do hip hop lite. They call it ‘lyrical hip hop’. This routine is about having one last moment with someone you love who has passed away. Didn’t Katee and Joshua already do this?

Ugh… I don’t know about this, y’all. Again, I am not buying it. He is definitely better than her, technically, and they dance it well, but there’s no emotion. At all. If they hadn’t told us the story I wouldn’t have gotten it. The choreography didn’t help them out, really… it didn’t’ sell the story at all. But even in the parts where they’re dancing together, where I guess she knows his ghost is there with her, it’s just not there. I am not a fan.

Nigel thought it was very emotional and they had it together, which I completely disagree with. Mary fakes us out, AGAIN, talking about how they didn’t meet her expectations at all, they blew them away. Whatever. Toni calls herself one of the original lockers and that it’s taken decades for street to be considered an art form. WHAT IS SHE TALKING ABOUT? Crack. Smoker.

Chelsie fring-y spin-y shake-y latin-y dances her way across the stage.

Twitch and Katee’s broadway is next. Katee is playing Sweet Georgia Brown, a girl who is chasing the guy around looking for Mr. Right.

It’s fine. It’s cute and fun and they dance it well. It doesn’t have as much personality as I had anticipated, but it’s fun to watch. I kind of got bored by the end.

Nigel says they could both be on broadway and compliments Twitch on his adaptability. He tells Katee he has enjoyed every routine she’s done this season. Mary says they were magnificent and well-matched and great. Toni thinks Twitch brings more reality to the choreography than broadway dancers do because he’s street. Does she get paid by the number of times she uses that word? C to the R to the A-Z-Y.

Joshua’s solo is fine, it’s kind of the same as his other solos, only less cool.

Courtney does a pretty generic contemporary solo, albeit in a really pretty dress. I think my problem with contemporary solos is that they all look like the moves my friend Allison and I used to do when we pretended to interpretive dance.

Twitch’s solo involves a lot of pointing and running. Blah.

Comfort and Mark’s second routine is a ‘jazzy’ foxtrot about a guy down on his luck who meets Lady Luck and things get better. This makes me nervous, too, but the hip hop went well, so who knows? I just think it’s a pretty strange coincidence that Comfort gets ballroom, AGAIN, with a lift, AGAIN.

It is… not so good. Comfort is so awkward in these things, y’all. She just cannot pull it off, at all, ever, the end. I think Mark is doing well, though. The whole thing is just okay. There aren’t any obvious mistakes or anything, it’s just not really fun to watch. Sad.

Nigel says they had no chemistry and overthought it and calls it amateurish. Mary critiques their technique and says she really didn’t like it. Toni pulls out a turn Comfort did and bases her whole critique on it. She compliments Mark but says overall it was not so good. Then she calls their hip hop FABULOUS. Timely.

Our last routine is disco with Chelsie and Joshua. I love watching this choreographer talk about how serious disco is and how much it matters. Ha. There are lots of lifts in this routine. Get ready.

Spins and lifts, spins and lifts, spins and lifts. I think Joshua kind of falls over at one point, but it’s hard to tell. Overall I think disco is pretty lame, and this is no exception. They do have this one crazy trick where he’s spinning her by one hand and one foot, and then his arms uncross and she flips over. It’s pretty awesome. But. Mostly lame.

Nigel talks a lot about how they have a lot of people on the show who work in Vegas. Awesome. He compliments the lifts and talks about how lucky Joshua is to be so strong. Mary says it was really good and they pulled off so many difficult tricks. Toni says they captured the spirit of a disco club and lays off the crazy for once.

Whew! Long show. Lots of routines.

My favorites: Mark and Comfort’s hip hop, Katee and Twitch’s contemporary
Least favorites: Chelsie and Joshua’s disco, Katee and Twitch’s broadway

RESULTS SHOW

Cat! Pretty again! What is up with the universe?

Group routine. We start out with a four-man hip hop: Comfort, Twitch, Mark and Katee. Has Katee done hip hop before? I can’t remember. Oh! I think she did a NapTab hip hop, so… no. Chelsie and Courtney come out and the girls have a solo bit, then the guys are all doing handstands on the stairs and it’s pretty awesome. The rest of the routine is the whole group together in unison. Now, you guys know I am not on the Comfort train at all, but she really stands out in this part. My eye is drawn to her over and over.

Jidges. What does Toni think about how hard it is to learn different dance styles? She talks about her career as a street dancer as we watch clips of her in the Mickey video and doing ballet. Then she tells us there are lots of dance styles out there and it’s impossible to master them. OK. She is also wearing a bow on her head that is made out of a trashbag. Nigel has a special announcement to make: lots of kids vote for these shows, and they also should vote in the presidential election. Thanks, pops.

Katee comes out first and we see clips of her from last night. I didn’t notice this last night, but in that contemporary routine last night she was totally rocking an Amy Winehouse look. Interesting. Is she safe? Well, yeah. Duh.

Will is next. Are we really doing this one at a time like this? They are showing us the entire show from last night. This is going to take forever. I definitely didn’t like his hip hop last night. They show Nigel talking about how this season is the first time he’s been emotionally affected by hip hop. Which, I get, but… does everything have to be so emotional and narrative? Why can’t we just have some good hip hop? Minus one or two, every hip hop routine this season has really just been contemporary with fists and sneakers. Will is in the bottom two. Whoa! I agree with that, but I am surprised.

Comfort. I will say that while I didn’t really enjoy her solo last night, I did think it was better than usual. It felt more choreographed and she took cues from the music. Also, on more viewings, I don’t think their foxtrot was as bad as the judges made it out to be. It wasn’t good, for real, but it wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened. Comfort, of course, is in the bottom two. No surprise there.

Mark! Hmmm…are they messing with me here? They wouldn’t put the bottom two guys up one right after the other and not even talk to the other two, right? RIGHT? If he is safe I am going to die. I just love watching him. He’s so interesting and adorable. I love him. Is he safe? Is he? HE IS! Shut up. I am so happy. I definitely did not see that coming. I love that boy.

Chelsie is next. I didn’t realize last night how dark that tango routine was. It was really hard to even see what they were doing. Did y’all like that disco as much as the judges did? It looks like they missed a bunch of connections and it all looks kind of awkward to me. But! She is safe. That’s good, I like her better than Courtney.

Twitch. I don’t know what to do with myself anymore, I have no idea what is going to happen. We get to hear more street insanity from Toni Basil. Seriously. He’s in the bottom two! What is happening in the universe? He starts crying and everyone goes crazy. I am not feeling this. Suck it up, man.

Joshua comes out next. This is lame. We know he is safe. Also, he gets really, really sweaty. It’s pretty gross.

Courtney. I really hated that hip hop. She, of course, is in the bottom two.

Our special performance this week is a pas de deux by two dancers from the Los Angeles ballet. I don’t actually know what a pas de deux is, but this is much more balletish than the one on the show last week. It’s really beautiful and graceful, with some amazing lifts and lots of en pointe work. I like it very much.

Solo time! Comfort is first. Her solos really have gotten better as the show has progressed. They just never seem to really go anywhere. Will is next and he goes for the joyful contemporary this time. I guess he decided impressions aren’t the way to go. He really is a beautiful dancer, I just don’t love him so much in the routines. Nigel talks about how Will and Twitch were the best performers last night (no), so America thinks they are safe and they don’t have to vote for them. Why are we talking to Nigel? Why is he wearing a VOTE tshirt? Courtney brings her best solo of the show so far – the music is fun and upbeat and there’s not a crawl or a slow motion reach to be found. Twitch is wearing his own tshirt, again, which I am not a fan of, but his solo is great. Is it musicality when your performance flows with the changes in the music really well? Because if it is, he has that.

LL Cool J is performing. I refuse to believe that he is still performing, so I will not be watching this. I heart you, tivo.

Elimination time! Girls first. I have thought all along that it would be Comfort, but who knows? Do people like Courtney apart from Gev? I guess they do, kind of, or they really hate Comfort because she is going home. Again. Time for the guys. This is insane, y’all. Who is going home? Will. Whoa. I am not his biggest fan, but I thought he was final four for sure. Crazy.

Also, it sucks that Jessica never got one of these montages of her best bits. She was way better than the judges wanted us to think she was.

Next week! Top six!

One Response to “So You Think You Can Dance - Top 8.”

1. Chelsea Says:
   July 25th, 2008 at 6:59 pm

   All I know about that weird thing they do on their shoulders is that every time they do it either the person doing it or someone near them says “for real”. That’s all I’ve got.

Leave a Reply