Season 5 Tour – Atlanta Part Two

Finally – you get your part two! As I am traveling, my usual schedule is a bit off. So bringing you part two required a visit to the Sprint store where the guy who sold me my phone was cool about getting the photos off and helping me put them on my laptop. And heeeeeeeeerrrrrrree we go. TOUR SPOILERS AHEAD!!

So, my video is crap. Sorry about that. I was pretty close to the stage, but we weren’t allowed to use flashes and there was a drunk girl perpetually standing up at the cool moments and ruining the shot. And most of the pictures taken with my cell phone didn’t work out – too dark. But, I did manage to get a few shots of me with some of the dancers, so I’ll put those at the end of this post. That slice of cheek next to a few of them? Yeah, that’s me cropped out. It was a looooong day. 🙂

Where should I begin to tell you about the show? Maybe I should start by saying that I lost my voice from screaming so much. And my mom got blisters from clapping so much. 🙂 We waited after the show for two hours in the cold to see the dancers (all but Janette) and it was totally worth it. Amanda’s already commented on some of her experiences in the comments of Part One.

First, they had recordings of Cat Deely introducing the dancers and some of the videos, and that was pretty cool. We kinda got to feel like she was with us a bit. Next, there was a new opening number to some sort of remix of the “Can Can” song from Moulin Rouge. Probably something like this one . That was really high-energy and got us all in the mood.

It was a bit campy in a good way. There were usually one or two dancers introducing each of the up-coming acts and they each wore different SYTYCD shirts. As Christine hinted at with her spoiler in the comments of my earlier post (which I totally didn’t get till last night, by the way), Kupono did a hysterical infomercial for the workout DVDs was was so incredibly silly and campy. Jeanine and Randi were really funny with him on stage for that. One of my favorite jokes of the night turned out to be a cool new routine. MAJOR SPOILER HERE.

Throughout the show, there was a running joke about Jeanine and Phillip’s Russian folk dance. Several times, they came out in their Russian costumes and started dancing the routine with the other dancers chastizing them for it and them pretending to be ashamed of themselves. Once, they even pretended to be the prop guys bringing in the surgical table for the Bob Fosse routine and got “caught.” It was pretty funny as running gags go, but I did wonder if they’d actually perform the routine. And then they started to do it, in the second half and the *rest of the dancers* came out in matching Russian folk costumes and did a little bit of the dance with them. And then it turned into a remix of the Russian folk with really hard-hitting, high-energy music. The guys stripped off the shirts and the girls peeled off a layer of their skirts, making them shorter and suddenly there were enormous jumps and lots of floor work (think the Russian routine with Twitch and Josh). It was amazing – a great payoff to the running joke. It was one of my favorite moments of the night and illustrates something I really like about SYTYCD. When something doesn’t work, they don’t hesitate to make fun of themselves and…make it better. Take a “failed routine” and make it something that works. That’s amazing.

Probably another of the highlights was Phillip’s solo. It was longer than *everyone* else’s, including Jeanine and Brandon and he got a standing ovation from the audience. His face was priceless, as it always is. Brandon got people out of the seats with his solo, but I have to say that Phillip did it first and did it best. 🙂

There were dozens of wonderful moments throughout the night, but those are just some of my standouts.

Then, waiting in the cold. And wouldn’t you know it, every single dancer who’d met me in the afternoon remembered me! How cool is that? I was pretty starstruck over Evan, though I tried to be cool. After all, I’m 15 years older than the 12 year old girl who was standing next to me – who almost fainted she was so excited to meet Jeanine. She was flustered and giggling and then apologized to Jeanine, who said (classy lady), “Are you kidding me?” in this tone that clearly said, “you’re why I do this.” It was late and all of the dancers were so warm and took their time. Many of them climbed onto the barricade and leaned over to take pictures with their fans who were a bit farther back. They did everything they could to get to us, which was nice.

Just past me, Evan was really sweet to a 5 year old whose birthday was in 20 minutes, according to her mom (it was late). And he was definitely nice to me – we took a picture of our wrist tattoos (his is “brother” in Greek of course and mine is “I’ll see you later” in Russian, which contains some of the Greek alphabet and looks similar).

Ade is my mom’s favorite and she insisted on waiting for him (which I was happy to do). When he came by, she said, “I heard you gave my daughter two hugs earlier this afternoon” and he laughed and hugged her. And then me again. 🙂

I had to retrieve my mom’s coat for her and ran to and from the parking lot, so I was really breathless when I got back. Randi had just moved on, but she came back and took a picture with me, giggling with me.

I have to say, seeing Jason again may have been the best of all. I was trying to juggle all of the things in my hands so I could give the camera to my mom and he was hugging on me the whole time and he said, “Hey, I just want to hug you.” Lol. Big flirt. I told him not to get into too much trouble in Miami. Somehow, I don’t think he’ll manage that. 🙂

It was a great night, as Amanda said.

Here are some more pictures for you, as promised.