This. Is. Vegas week! The 152 contestants roll out of SUVs, whooping and yelling “Vegas, Baby!” How trite. It makes me miss Vitolio, who wasn’t shy about letting us all know that this is a “diarrhea moment”. Vitolio kept it real! Nigel’s hair is much shorter and hipper. Lookin’ good, Nigel!
Each contestant performs a solo to remind the judges that A. They are great dancers and deserve to be here or B. Mary was still drunk during the New Orleans auditions, and she let anyone who could walk in a straight line through. First up is that Nathan guy from the season five auditions —he was too young to participate that season, but Nigel gave him a ticket to Vegas for season six. Cat tries to build the “can he still cut it” suspense, but about four counts into the music he puts that question to rest by busting out some octuple pirouette. The rest of the dance is a bit odd—he spends about eight counts just twirling his finger in a circle. But the judges seem to get it, and he’s safe.
BTW I didn’t recap the auditions (I have a decent excuse!), but one of my favorite moments was Mary’s list of things not to do, which included that God awful “Reach to nowhere” move. THANK YOU! They should have bouncers in the wings to throw out any contestant who dares incorporate The Reach. I would be happy to volunteer my services.
Ellenore (whose name my spell check keeps trying to correct to Eeyore) does a cute and funny routine that manages to show off her personality and excellent classic training. Debbie Allen proclaims her love multiple times, Tyce wants her in the top 20, and the judges give her a standing ovation. She is so through to the top 20. Calling it now.
Montage. Great turns, girls writhing, Nigel looking letch, someone spinning on his head. More montaging that starts out with Debbie swearing, but morphs into pretty much the best stuff I’ve ever seen. The New Orleans bounce guy is back looking better than ever, inspiring all of the judges to bounce along with him, and prompting me to bounce along at home. It’s really contagious, y’all!
Folks get cut; including two of our hard luck story kids: Allison, who is hearing impaired, and that Thomas guy from GA who lived in some drug riddled town or something. I don’t recognize most of the people who got cut this round, except for Caitlyn Kenny’s sister.
The remaining 111 people have an hour to learn a NappyTabs piece. New Orleans bounce looks crazy relieved to hear that hip hop is first. Teddy with the crazy pants during the auditions makes it through. Next up is Ryan (Evan’s brother), and GAH! We’re subjected to his whole story AGAIN!!!!! Holy crap. I really hope he gets cut just so I don’t have to hear this story rehashed every single week. His group performs, and…wow. Looks like this might be my lucky day, because boy is he botching this! He’s a half a count off, and…I’m not sure he’s even doing the same dance as the rest of the dancers. Wow. This is bad! Nigel calls him out for stinkin’ up the joint with his terrible dancing, and says they are giving him one more chance, but he better step it up quickly.
Day two! Louis van Amstel has put together a super fast cha-cha routine. The krumper (sp?) from Boston has the good fortune to get paired with a ballroom superstar, and looks fantastic during his audition. I like the versatile ones! Some guy gets a crazy bloody nose—seriously, I almost fainted from the sight of it (this is why I’m not a doctor, and why I don’t watch horror movies). In general, ballroom looks like it’s going really well, other than the busted beak.
Some people I don’t really remember are asked to dance for their life. The busted nose kid performs and goes through; even without having a chance to really rehearse. Good for him! Ryan is in the last group of the day. Since this is now apparently the Ryan show, we see about eighteen minutes of his rehearsal and performance. I don’t know much about the cha-cha, but I know terrible when I see it…and this is terrible. You know how the Paso Doble is supposed to be all aggressive and mean and macho? That’s exactly how he’s dancing, and it looks really out of place. Maybe he got confused about the style? Anyway, the judges look all kinds of upset. Nigel gives a pretty long explanation that he wasn’t great yesterday, and that he wasn’t great today, and he’s going home. He calls Evan on speaker phone to let him know that he got cut, and waxes poetic about how some things aren’t meant to be, etc, and you can’t take things for granted. I think he’s pretty surprised—I get the feeling that he thought he was a shoo in for this season’s top 20.
Dances for life! First up is John from New Orleans. Nigel complains that “the lights were on, but nobody was home”, and that he needs more personality. Debbie says something like “I just can’t see keeping you when there are so many other better dancers here”, but something about the way she says it makes it sound a lot less harsh than it was. One of my old dance teachers (hi Shirley!) had an absolute gift for this; she would give you feedback, and it wasn’t until you were repeating it to your friends that you realized she basically told you that you were the suckiest suck who ever sucked. Legacy the b-boy is freaking out before his dance for his life. He’s crying all over the place. Man up, Legacy! He does a respectable job of his solo. Nigel says that his cha-cha stinks (that’s what she said!), and he needs to bring his game up. Mia calls him an asshole, because what he does is amazing, but he sucks so much? Okay Mia. He gets all yeses and is through to the next round.
More cuts post ballroom: Teddy gets cut, as does New Orleans, and basically anyone I recognized from the auditions. Bummer!
Next week: more Vegas, more crying, more people leaving in ambulances. (Should that be ambuli? What an awkward plural!) Other than Ellenore, and that High School Musical girl, I really have no favorites thus far. Thoughts?
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