SYTYCD Season 7 Top 6 Performance Thoughts/Power Rankings

Oh.my.gawd. This week’s Power Rankings is both easier and harder than ever. But Fox, seriously? Take care of these dancers! All joking aside, while I am glad you addressed it and yes, we all have been talking/*joking about it, COME ON!

*This season of SYTYCD should probably be called SYTYCD Survivor: Dance to the Death! Sux… #sytycd 5:58 PM Jul 14th via web

Sigh. With no further…lectures…

Top Three

Kent – Man, he’s teflon. He did a solid jazz with Kathryn and I have to give him MAJOR props for using a Boyz II Men song for his solo. I think this was the first tape I bought with my own money when I was growing up. Oh man. Can’t believe I just dated myself so publicly. But he’ll get major points for that steps routine with Twitch. You couldn’t even hear a lot of the steps because of all the hooting and hollering for him – which actually sort of bugged me a bit. But they still kept it together and it was a lot of fun. He did keep up way better than I thought he would. It was no “Outta Your Mind,” and the comparisons are inevitable since they’re both Nappytabs’ routines and both feature Twitch “schooling” a contestant. I think it helped the “Outta Your Mind” routine that Alex is almost the same size as Twitch and he took up the same physical space. I did enjoy Kent and Twitch together, mind you, but Kent seemed to be getting schooled way more and I think his being smaller than Twitch added to that overall effect. Regardless, Kent had a GREAT night, as always, and even if he’d done poorly in one of the routines, which he didn’t, his fans would probably still keep him safe. 🙂

Lauren – She carried off cowboy hip-hop with Twitch (AND rode him across the stage!), had a strong solo and a fun samba with Robert. Not only is she the only girl left which helps her stand out and probably protects her to some degree, I think people (including me) are starting to get her quirky/sarcastic personality and really fall in love with her dancing.

Adechike –

FINALLY, I really get Adechike. It started a bit last week with his contemporary routine with Kent. But this week. Wow. This week. His solo was pretty incredible, but what really won me over was that Nappytabs lyrical hip hop with Comfort. I could tell in the rehearsal footage that it was gonna be incredible – he seemed way more open and connected to her than with any of his other partners (with the possible exception of Alex and Kent. This was the night that my “Adechike hate” (as Donna put it) ended. His solo was a taste of my lack of hate. His paso with Jose was… a’right. But the second I heard “Fallin'” (a song I love anyway), I was like, “ohhhhh, Adechike’s gonna make me fall for him.” And haters fall HARD. Well done, Chike. Well done. My mom says that you and Comfort should always dance together. It was amazing to see that wall break down so thoroughly that the tears came. I get him. Finally. FINALLY! But you BETTER have chemistry next week, Adechike! I know what you can do, now!

Bottom Three

Robert – I love Robert. He’s been in danger before, though he was saved from the bottom 3 last week. There’s a major campaign (especially among other dancers, from what I’ve seen) to vote for Robert. So, there’s a chance he may slip out of the bottom 3 again this week and I hope that’s the case. He danced with both the Lauren’s tonight AND it was his birthday! He danced the “you shot me with your booty” Tyce jazz which was AMAZING with “Elle” Gottlieb and then a samba with “Elle” Froderman. He *did* remind me of Dmitry in the samba, I have to agree with Nigel. He was masculine and strong and just him in both his dances. He picked a great song for his solo and it was solid. But, I gotta draw my bottom 3 line somewhere…

Billy – Automatically in the bottom 3 cause he couldn’t dance due to his knee injury. This is the LAST STRAW! This one better be the last injury or I’m calling Child Welfare on SYTYCD. Anyway, if there is any justice in the universe of SYTYCD/FOX/dance, the judges will not send Billy home when he couldn’t dance, even if he has been there before. Remember, everyone, BOOGIE SHOES!!!

Jose – Despite his puppy dog eyes, his dancing is not up to snuff. I think he’s the weakest link. Goodbye. No, seriously. I loved his contemporary with Allison. It was a great song and great choreography – and a real surprise from Sonya. But, I have to agree with the judges that there wasn’t a lot of “dancing” for him to do and Sonya masked his weaknesses well. Which made it a great routine. BUT…it’s a competition…. His solo was boring. Seen it. Done. And while I agree he made a valiant attempt at the paso, he was weaker than Adechike and the weakest parts of the routine were all the lifts/interactions between the two guys – which I think was mostly due to him. But the poses and the cape work were terrific. Still, I think there’s some major backlash against Jose since he’s the least technically skilled and he’s learning the least. Seriously, I’m tired of this “journey” arc they’re pushing on us. While his choreographers have generally been very kind and protective (with the exception of Joey Dowling, bless her) and he has soldiered through the various routines – he hasn’t been incorporating anything new in his tricks. In my mind, if he were learning and growing as a dancer, he would be using some of his new tricks in his solos. There’s only so much shuffling and hand work I can stand. I’m sorry, I really am.

Some Final Thoughts

-Love Kenny Ortega as a judge. I want him back all the time. As I Tweeted to Amanda, he’s informed, supportive and interesting, which is exactly what we need on the show. I don’t mind having four judges if at least one rotates and if at least ONE makes some sort of sense. Though, I would prefer two or three to make sense on a given night.

-But speaking of making sense, Nigel and I were on the same page tonight. He read my mind several times. The first time when he mentioned “Bleeding Love” in his comments to Adechike/Comfort about “Fallin.” I was thinking of “Bleeding Love” several times throughout their routine – in a great way. Probably cause it was the same choreographers. And a suitcase again. And about a relationship. 🙂 The second time is when Nigel told Robert that his upper body reminded him of Dmitry in the samba. I was thinking of Dmitry throughout the routine. Also, in a good way. And again when he said that the Jose-Adechike paso wasn’t everything he’d hoped it would be. Me, either.

-All this routine echoes (“Outta Your Mind” and “Bleeding Love”) brings me to two points that are related. I was WORRIED when I saw that several of tonight’s choreographers had two routines. Nappytabs, Sonya and Dmitry all had two routines and they were surprisingly close together. LUCKILY and most notably in the case of Sonya, the routines were either entirely different from each other or very different from the choreographer’s usual style. Nappytabs luckily had two very different set of dancers (Lauren and Twitch, then Adechike and Comfort), as well as different narratives and very different music. Dmitry had one male-female and then a male-male, so that automatically set them apart and the tones were entirely different. But Sonya was the real revelation to me. Neither of Sonya’s two pieces felt like a “Sonya piece” in that way that had started to actually get old tonight. Actually, Tyce’s felt more like a stereotypical Sonya piece. Her two pieces tonight had might lighter music and costumes than she normally goes with and beyond those surfaces observations, really proved to me that she does have versatility as a choreographer. Just when I was starting to get bored. 🙂

-The contestants are dancing with All-Stars they’ve never danced with before. So, clearly not random. They showed the drawing out of the hat for the double contestant routines BUT, I am suspicious yet again. How accidentally can it be that this week was all about whether Adechike or Jose would dance less successfully. SO, they got paired together in a battle dance. Head to head, pose for pose. How about that coincidence? However, that being said, I LOVED the rehearsal package we saw of A/J before their routine. East Coast OVERDRIVE!!

-I liked seeing all their parents, but I agree with Nigel that it was tough. Especially this week, for some reason. Though, they had time for it since Billy wasn’t dancing.

-Loved the Kherington sighting! I think that means she may dance tomorrow! I hope it does. What if she’s performing a blast-from-the-past routine with an All-Star?? Sure, Twitch has already danced with Comfort, but I’d love to see ANY of Twitchington’s routines again. 🙂 Really, any of them. I’m re-watching now. “Dreaming with a Broken Heart,” “Too Darn Hot,” “Don’t Touch Me,” “2 Buck 4 TV,” “A New Day Has Come.” Doesn’t matter. We just need Kherington back.

-Wow, I got a little off topic there. Alright, I’ll wrap things up. I loved the cake for the 150 episode/Robert’s birthday at the end. Loved that Kent was dancing with Kathryn and Lauren (“Elle” Gottlieb). Ladies man! And I LOOOOOVED that Adechike and Twitch re-inacted a few steps from the paso at each other. Great way to end the show.

Hmmm, what do y’all think, eh? Amanda and I were each writing our thoughts posts at the same time, though we didn’t realize it. Check hers out, she’s got some great points, especially about how stepping has been done on SYTYCD before.