Has the hour time cap forced So You Think You Can Dance‘s producers to tighten focus for Season 14 — highlighting both talent and stylistic diversity on a weekly basis, giving viewers less of the most conventional contemporary auditions and more ballroom, more varied hip hop, and a smattering of specialty styles? While the competitive…
Tag: ballroom dance
Quick Steps
Wednesday Watch: World of So You Think You Can Dance
Note: Updated June 16 NBC’s new World of Dance set a rough road its first two weeks for fans of ballroom; similarly, the genre’s had more downs than ups on Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance, with the last real gasp in its last adult-focused season coming when Latin champ and SYTYCD Canada winner…
Quick Steps
Wednesday Watch: Strictly Seasonal
For this last Wednesday Watch before Christmas, why not pass the time with a few festive picks from Strictly Come Dancing‘s annual Christmas special? (And take a further moment to ask just why its American counterpart can’t mount a similar gala event?) Harry Judd and Joanne Clifton, “Baby It’s Cold Outside” (American Smooth, 2015) Great…
Dance, Quick Steps
Dancing With the Stars, Season 23: Week 7 in Review
Eras Night is one of my preferred Dancing With the Stars theme nights when done to its best — reasonable tributes to a period or a style, less so when involving odd mash-ups or blatant inaccuracies. Last night’s offered its own mixed bag, but on the whole presented a fairly enjoyable line-up — even if…
Dance, Quick Steps
Dancing With the Stars, Season 23: Week 6 in Review
Near the season’s halfway point, the standouts are established and the reliable choreographers can be expected to deliver. Here are a few routines that I prized from this season’s Latin Night. 1. Calvin Johnson and Lindsay Arnold, Argentine Tango A refreshingly stripped-down Argentine tango where the focus is on pure dance connection — and a…
Dance, Quick Steps
Dancing With the Stars, Season 23: Week 4 in Review
By week four, Dancing With the Stars contestants are beginning to shake out in terms of finalist potential, long run promise, and likely fodder. This week’s Cirque du Soleil theme set the stage for a few season-best performances, though wide range in terms of content-heavy material. 1. Laurie Hernandez and Val Chmerkovskiy picked up the…
Dance, Quick Steps
Dancing With the Stars, Season 23: Week 2 in Review
Week 2 usually marks a bit of a lull, as couples now face only one week to prepare a routine and most celebrities still have considerable room to grow. And when paired with “TV Theme Night” and its often ill-suited musical selections, there’s another level of added difficulty. Still, a number of performances rose above…
Quick Steps
Wednesday Watch: Four Quicksteps
In the spirit of dance as a bit of joy in the midst of darkness, one traditional mood-lifting quickstep — and three in variation. 1. 2010 Blackpool British Professional Final, Quickstep Your standard-bearer. 2. “Ballroom Blitz,” Iveta Lukosiute and Nick Young (So You Think You Can Dance) In its later original-recipe seasons, So You Think…
Ice Dance, Other Sites, Step Sequences
17. Samba
Between next month’s Rio Olympics and the recent announcement of the 2016-17 season’s revisitation of the Latin short dance, it may finally be time to turn our eyes to that most complex of Latin dances: the samba. A quick look at its overall history is useful and highlights certain of its historical complexities. Note that…
Quick Steps
Wednesday Watch: 2016 Blackpool Dance Festival Highlights
May 26 marked the start of the 2016 Blackpool Dance Festival, concluding this Friday. While it’s not always easy to follow results and performance in real time short of a subscription to DSI TV, DSI London also provides a taste with some free highlight footage, including these terrific clips from the Amateur Latin Championship: And…
