SYTYCD Season Five – The Journey starts once again to find “America’s Favorite Dancer”

New York – Tabitha and Napoleon
The refrain ending in a low voice: “…dance, dance, dance” is back! Cat is hot as always (but with tired eye bags), dancing in the streets with the riff raff, and we see the familiar faces of Nigel and Mary, the screaming dynamic duo of dance judging, as well as other familiar faces. In New York at the BAM we started with NappiTabs and the first auditions gave the tone: animals and zombies! Perhaps appropriate for NYC.
Gaby Torres – Animalistic rheumatoid arthritis, acrobatic training and circus, reminds of Mark K – Tabitha is perceptive and gets that she’s representing a bird: No, really? How did you guess that, Tabitha? Seriously, I liked Gaby. She has potential. Can she be this seasons’ Mark? Not sure… We’ll see.
Zombie Dancers – Hobgoblin and the other – Uncomfortable to watch… Mutation Weird “Dawn of the Dead the Musical” – glad they walked out of the choreography! I don’t know if I could’ve stood them any more… Sorry! Never mind, we’ll probably have to watch them again as the SYTYCD producer will, for sure, milk this contortionist act to death.
Crazy to be there, amateur shows make us laugh a while. Spaghetti Tap by Peter Sabastino, great tap routine gets him to Vegas. Can he do anything else, I wonder? I’m not sure. His act seemed too sloppy for someone supposedly trained in “everything from ballet to jazz, you name it…” Really? We’ll see…
Nina and Igor’s spinning trick was, I don’t know if weird or fabulous. It reminded me of a blender spinning egg yolks for Rocky’s breakfast… but what do I know? Perhaps it would have been better in Philadelphia.
The umbrella act: Umbrella fetishist, partners dirtily with a black cloth all wired up... under that umbrella, ella, ella, ella… no matter how much rain, his dancing was still not clean! Next: Are we going to see Mary Poppins auditioning?
I liked Chimezei’s (sorry, didn’t get the spelling of his name…) drive thru dance performance.
In Denver, there was mile high dancing with Sonja judging to rock the Rockies. Kayla Rodonsky did cat moves to an odd version of the Beatles’ Blackbird—I liked it! She is different and she’s going places, including Vegas. Kayla is top 20 material for sure!
Mitch and Misha’s gender bending dance makes statements that Samba speechlessly into absolute weirdness. It creates a different perception. Balanchine always said that the man was the Prince and the woman the Queen. Here, we just were not sure this time, since the roles reversed with each spin… Honestly, the two brothers popping did a better job as two male dancers than Mitch and Misha....
And, as always, the producers saved the best for last. Natalie Reid – Katee’s friend (remember?) – was good. However (pardon my ignorance): She didn’t move me. Brandon, on the other hand, was a treat to watch and made the whole two hours worthwhile. We said it last year as we said it now: This boy is an awesome dancer! Brandon Bryant danced spectacularly to the dramatic music of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. A top twenty shoe-in. By the way, you can read our review of last season’s Brandon audition at: http://thedancefiles.blogspot.com/2008/05/sytycd-episode-3-so-you-think-weve-seen.html .
At the end, Nigels’ scoots off with a young hottie dancer…