So You Think You Can Dance

Cafe Society
1

Is anyone else watching this show? So far I’m really enjoying it. They really seem to be looking for people who can actually dance rather than simply prance around.

2

I missed the first ep, but caught the other two.

What most surprised me is that they didn’t do that ‘watch our judges mock the hopeless auditioners’ that is the standard on Idol. Pretty much everyone they showed was able to dance to a ‘much better than the average man on the street’ level, at least IMHO.

Why do you suppose this is? Have the show developers developed some self-restraint and tact? (I kinda doubt it.)

Or is it that there simply aren’t a whole lot of people out there who have deluded themselves about being great dancers? If so, why no delusions about dance while we’ve all seen there are a whole lot of delusions about singing?

Some possible theories:
I) Dancing tends to be mostly a social activity – you take lessons or do it with a partner or ‘perform’ in public – and if you’re lousy at it, you get the message from the snickers and complaints from partners. Singing, otoh, can be done in private – showers, cars, your own home in general – and so you’re less exposed to feedback?
II) Dancing doesn’t have the built in ‘distortion’ effect hearing our own voice does, with the singer hearing it partly through his skull instead of just with the ears as other people do. If you have eyes, and a mirror…well, you automatically see what other people do.

III) Physical feedback. If you aren’t graceful, you’ll probably hurt yourself or someone else pretty quickly. And straining to perform moves you aren’t physically fit enough for will HURT, apparently unlike screeching after too high notes.

IV) Dancers usually have music they’re trying to dance to. It’s very obvious when you fail to keep up or get out of synch.

What do you think?

3

There were three people I didn’t like:

  1. The girl who faked the hip injury when she couldn’t get the choreography and started dancing freestyle in front of everybody five minutes later

  2. The guy who (I think) deliberately brought his dog in the room so that his roommate Big Poppa (I love that guy) would perform sub-par, who was a professional and was featured in a dance magazine and who also said that the hip-hop dance instructor was “jealous” of him.

  3. The other girl who faked the hamstring injury during the choreography and also freestyled later, doing splits and bouncing up and down.

I felt sorry for the tall girl, and later on, for Big Poppa, because he couldn’t do some of the moves due to his size.