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So You Think You Can Gobble: 8.13, “Week Four: Results”

 

The group routine that kicks of tonight’s festivities is a Bollywood number by veteran choreographer Nakul Dev Mahajan, set to the song “Kata Kata” from the RAAVAN soundtrack. Bollywood is almost always fun to watch, even when it’s not done particularly well. Fortunately the Top 14 dancers all do particularly well. It’s fast, hyperkinetic, and there are interesting things for every one of them to do. For once I don’t feel like the group number is playing favorites.

As all the dancers sweat and wheeze their exhausted way off the stage, host extraordinaire Cat Deeley reintroduces us to our judges. Two bits of good news tonight: first, Cat has sex-hair again; second, Carmen Electra is MIA (as in not there, not as in she’s secretly the singer MIA… oh nevermind.)

Welcome… to SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE!

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So You Think You Can Gobble: 8.05, “Green Mile – Top 20 Revealed”

We’ve made it! Weeks of auditions and a brutal, bloodthirsty Vegas callback elimination process have lead us here, to the fabled “green mile.” In seasons past this has meant a sort of morbid and drawn out episode of the remaining hopefuls taking the long walk down the video-lined hallway, reminiscing about their journey to this point before facing down the judges for what may or may not be the last time ever. It’s emotional, and sometimes awkward, and often manipulative. But that’s always been part of the fun.

However, this year we get a new format. Tonight we start out on the brand new Season 8 stage, in front of a live audience and the line of judges, and the stunning-as-ever Cat Deeley. As the final dancers are chosen we get to see them perform full choreographed routines on the stage. It’s actually a nice change, in my opinion. This gets us to the performance element of the season a bit quicker than we normally would have. As one of our readers put it on Twitter last night, “Less angst. More dance.” Amen.

And so, for the first time this season…

Welcome… to SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE!

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So You Think You Can Gobble

Less than a week away from the premier of So You Think You Can Dance Season 8, I cannot keep my feet still…metaphorically speaking. My intention this season will be to post reviews here each week (we’ll see how that works out for me), but to kick things off I wanted to list my Top 10 favorite performances from seasons past. There’s just one problem…well, two actually. First of all, I only started watching the series with Season 4. And second, I’m horrible at making lists. So what would have been a Top 10 of the series will now be my Top 15 from Seasons 4-7.

The criteria I used to pick these performances include: originality and creativity of the choreography; musical inspiration; likability of the dancers; and something I’m just going to call the wow factor, which mostly has to do with how emotionally moved I was by the piece, either to cheer or cry or whatever.

It’s practically impossible to find good quality videos of past seasons for this show, so everything I’m including below carries with it the disclaimer inherent in all YouTube content: some is crystal clear and HD quality; most is average, low-res video; a few are truly crappy, pixelated abortions. Enter at your own risk.

So without further ado…

Paul’s Top 15 So You Think You Can Dance Performances!

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