I guess maybe I'm in the minority but I still freaking love Lil' C and his crazy, made-up language. I totally think he and Mia must hang out and make up new and ridiculous ways of talking about dance.
Before I get into the critiques here, I'd just like to mention that Cat looked unbelievably gorgeous last night and as soon as I can find a picture of her from the show, I'm going to post it. Now, on with the grades!
Top Three Boys - Pop Jazz, I think (Sonya Tayeh)
Awesome, great, terrific. I don't have a whole lot more to say. It was strong, it was interesting, ALL of the guys danced it great. A joy to watch.
Grade: A
Jeanine and Ade - Samba (Louis Van Amstel)
It's not going to be a routine that stands out either for how it was danced (good or bad) or the choreography in particular (the way Dimitry's Samba for Lacey and Danny in Season 3 does). But unlike the judges, I thought they were equally flat. I'm not going to give Ade undue praise just because I love him - he wasn't as good as he should have been and the judges rightly let him have it for that. But in the same breath, for the second week in a row I thought Jeanine showed her weaknesses and I was bothered by the judges insistence that she was basically flawless in the routine just because she looked so damn hot in her feather-butted dress.
Grade: C-
Melissa and Evan - Broadway (Tyce DiOrio)
They are over-using Broadway this season in the worst way. I'm not generally a fan of this style dance and I find Tyce's Broadway choreography really...repetitive. That said, for what it was, it was a perfectly cute, entertaining piece. Unfortunately, Melissa had some extension problems with her back leg in a couple of places and the dancing overall was nothing to get excited about. The performances were pretty good...not great. It was just a very average routine and that's particularly disappointing this late in the competition when I want everything to be awesome.
Grade: B-
Kayla and Brandon - Contemporary (Stacey Tookie)
They need to cut Tyce's routine count in 1/2 next season and have Stacey back a LOT more because girlfriend gives us GREAT routines! This one was all about Kayla having an affair with a married Brandon and wanting to break it off but then NOT breaking it off in the end. It gave me goose bumps. There was a lot of really slow movement that seemed to steam and ache with passion in between these strong, emotional moments. These two were outstanding and definitely the only two dancers left who could have pulled this off to this degree.
Grade: A
Jeanine and Ade - Hip Hop (Tabith and Napoleon)
It stank. I'm sick of their props and their derivative choreography and their overly literal storytelling. I'm sick of the fact that none of these dancers seems to really be able to do hip hop this year. Remember when Pasha totally effing ROCKED the Transformers routine? He was a damn ballroom dancer and his ass owned hip hop when he got it. These kids dance hip hop like they're skipping through grandma's garden and it's starting to piss me off. This dance was soggy and boring from the word go and I was glad when it was over. I can't blame anyone in particular - the fault here lies equally with the choreographers and the dancers.
Grade: D
Melissa and Evan - Quickstep (Louis Van Amstel)
Probably my favorite Quickstep choreography on this show ever. Possibly my favorite Quickstep performance on this show so far. It's a hard dance to do, it's a hard dance to appreciate, it's a hard dance to critique (I'm not a ballroom dancer for God's sweet sake), but all the same I thought they did a really good job with it. I agreed with Lil' C that Evan didn't seem to take any direction from Nigels criticism in week 2 about the snappiness of his retractions (and I'm taking this opportunity to say how much I love that Lil' C watches and pays such close attention all along the way, not just to the dancers but to what the judges have told them!) because particularly in the Charleston section of the dance, his retractions remained sort of limp but overall performance on this one made it pretty hard to watch his feet at all.
Grade: B+
Kayla and Brandon - Disco (Doriana Sanchez)
First things first - Doriana needs to wear a bra!!! Now that I've got that off my chest (hee!), I'll say that I'm sick of disco. One or two disco routines per season is more than enough and if I'm not mistaken, this is at least the third, maybe the fourth. This one seemed chaotic and like she was throwing everything at the wall to see what would stick and then turning the speed up to 90 just to force it to all go together, which it didn't. The double death drop was clever but ridiculous since it looked very much like Brandon was going to pull her arm clean off when he went down. During his assisted flip at the end, I honestly thought he was going to kick her in the face. The entire thing was awkward and difficult to watch.
Grade: C+
Top 3 Girls - Pop Jazz I think (Sonya Tayeh)
The three girls were super heroes. Much like the boys' number, this was great. Sonya was ON this week and completely killed it. The movement was all very precise and interesting. The ladies danced it wonderfully.
Grade: A
Solos were, as usual, boring and unimpressive. I don't see any future choreographers coming out of this bunch of dancers, that's for sure.
Predictions: Melissa and Jeanine are the bottom 2 girls (that might be more of a hope - I think Jeanine may have a stronger fan base than Kayla does but Kayla's dancing was definitely stronger than Jeanine's this week in my opinion); Ade and Evan are the bottom 2 boys (again, this is more what I think it SHOULD be than what it actually will be as I think Evan's extremely strong fan base will keep him in it to the bitter end despite the fact that I think he is the weakest male dancer left in the competition and has been for several weeks now). Ade and Melissa are going home - much to my chagrin as I think it should be Evan and Jeanine. Oh well.
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