So You Thought You Could Dance III

I was worried, in the last post-commercial-break section of SYD this week, that I wouldn't have anything to write about here. Watching SYD on the couch of friend Sharon should have made the show that much more enjoyable -- but dance after dance failed to impress.

Ballroom dances were actually the most impressive last night. Honest to goodness: ballroom.

Chelsea and Mark and Courtney and Gev each had good-and-hot ballroom routines. Sadly, Chelsea and Mark's other routine was Broadway style, which was also good-and-hot, but no businessman-and-wife.

The "Adam and Eve" contemporary routine danced by Will and Jessica was raved about by judges Nigel, Mary Murphy and Mia, but Sharon and I didn't "get it." There was a point near the end when I think I identified their expulsion from the garden, but other than that, and their "earthy" movement (Adam was made from dust, you see), I didn't see the connection.

Contemporary dance has this issue: Except for "pop" contemporary, which you can tell was designed for mass consumption, like the prop-contemporary choreography Mia did last year and last week, the movement-for-the-sake-of-movement of jazz and contemporary doesn't make sense to those who aren't technically proficient -- or it doesn't automatically make sense to us all. There are a few people, I'm sure, like Julia Robert's Pretty Woman understanding opera, who "get it" naturally.

I'm not one.

That's no big surprise. If I hadn't played trumpet in a jazz band, I'd probably never have listened to Arturo Sandoval or Maynard Ferguson, and I probably wouldn't have a very strong opinion on which "Mack the Knife" is the authoritative one. (Louis Armstrong's.) I'd think "wow, that note is high" if I found myself listening to an F above the staff, but I wouldn't want to throw up, crawl into a hole or eviscerate myself.

Tyce Diorio was the choreographer. He's a long-time contemporary, jazz and Broadway SYD choreographer, and he's occasionally appeared as a judge. The judges for this week spent as much time complimenting him on his work as they did making statements on Will and Jessica's execution. The most interesting thing about the whole routine was the fact that Mia referred to having Tyce over at her house and listening to the music he used for "Adam and Eve." (She fell asleep in the middle.)

"Oh," I thought. "They're friends, and he went over. That's so nice."

In other dances, Comfort and Thane failed to impress in each of their styles (hip-hop and contemporary, respectively). They'll probably be booted off tonight unless the judges want Jessica off more than Comfort.

So everything was disappointment, disappointment -- until the final scene.

Cat, in a dress soooooooooooo relieving this week that I commented on how much I liked looking at it just about every time she appeared on screen, had announced in the show's opener that we would be seeing the first Bollywood dance ever on SYD.

Confession: I love Bollywood. I love Bollywood in the way I love "It's Raining Men" -- viscerally, and because it's so unrelentingly positive. I've seen Bride and Prejudice and own Dil Ka Rishta and Lagaan (though I haven't watched that one yet -- I'm saving it). I love Monsoon Wedding, even though it's not strictly Bollywood.

But I really thought I'd hate this dance, a la SYD's attempts at krump.

(There was another krump routine this week, too, performed pretty decently by "Twitchington" -- it went as well as choreographed krump can be expected to go.)

Happily, I was wrong: Bollywood was delightful!

I exclaim this because Bollywood is exactly the sort of style where exclamation is useful and necessary. The two characters Katee and Joshua played were typical Bollywood lovers -- Katee played hard-to-get, and Joshua tried hard to get her. Their costumes were appropriate and their dance moves were on-target. It was just fun to watch.

Afterward, the judges were thrilled. Nigel, who said he'd been trying to get Bollywood onto SYD for three years, took the opportunity to make a semi-political statement, possibly the first in SYD history: "I wish the world would come together through dance rather than what we're doing at the moment." (Nigel is, of course, British.)

Mia said of Katee's bindi-ed face and chest, and sparkly Indian costume, "You need to dress like that every day of your life, Katee."

It may seem that the judges were congratulating the dance style and themselves for adding it more than they were congratulating the execution of it, but Mia (who was mean all evening, perhaps in sync with the over-one-eye, Clockwork-Orange black hat she was wearing) didn't pull any punches saying that Joshua had been stiff, and the dance really was well executed. I felt, as I think the judges felt, relieved that Katee and Joshua had gotten Bollywood instead of one of the less-proficient couples. (Comfort and Thane, the lopsided Will and Jessica, and the fun-but-cotton-candy Gev and Courtney come to mind.)

I hope to see a lot more Bollywood on the show -- and while we're at it, let's get contra dancing, clogging and Schemitzun-style dance on there, too. Even America has a few more original dances we haven't tapped into.

We could have the Amish, Michael Flatley and members of the Mashantucket Pequot Nation as guests, respectively.

It'd beat Hillary Duff, that's for sure.

*Update: Comfort and Thane were indeed axed. The final 10 are lookin' good.