Tuesday, June 9, 2009

WELCOME . . . TO SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE! I'm still digesting the composition of this season's top 20 dancers. While it's always nice not to be spoonfed the producers' views as to who the finalists should necessarily be, there was an unusually big subset of the population who got heavy coverage in the audition rounds and then fell into a black hole somewhere and were never heard from again. We were told that I Love My Dead Gay Son guy got cut right away -- apparently insufficient weightlifting deep in the heart of Texas -- and we are all extremely well versed in the tragic ouster of Ryan Kasprzak. But I remember less than half of the top 20, which is a little disconcerting. And assuming that mjsbigblog listed all the auditions they could find, only half of the top 20's auditions made it into the audition episodes at all.

But now we're in the studio with choreographers (including Wade Robson!) and an official panel of judges (including Cosmopolitan Family Fave and successful Season Five auditioner Adam Shankman!), and so this week is a whole 'nother ball game. We will of course be here to talk about the tamale express, the perils of the quickstep, and our views on hard versus soft hip hop.

We are fortunate this year to have an in-house dance expert who will occasionally be chiming in to offer her thoughts on SYTYCD. Long-time lurker and occasional commenter Janet is the director of the ballet school affiliated with a highly-regarded dance company, and has volunteered to share her expertise with us. In this first installment, Janet shares what it is that enables some dancers to progress to higher levels while others of us (hi!) never make it past that first level of sparkly costumes and basic steps. She then goes on to offer her thoughts as to what exactly those darned Vegas judges were looking for. Enjoy!

Over the course of a dancer's life, there is a natural process of attrition that diminishes the numbers of dancers from the many who begin training as a young child to the very few who become professional dancers. This happens in all art forms and sports.

When you first begin dance lessons, you attend class, do what the teacher says and, except in rare cases, you can pretty much count on being promoted to the next level each year along with your classmates. And once you've been cast in your first production, you can pretty much count on having a role each subsequent year. The requirements for those early levels and roles have mostly to do with age, height, and natural or learned coordination.

At different points along the way, the requirements for a level or role will filter out those who are not yet or never will be qualified. The higher up you progress, the more stringent these requirements become. And on the dancer's side of things, some will decide they aren't willing to commit the required time and energy, or that the few rewards aren't worth the many disappointments. Others may find another activity that interests them more. This pyramid-shaped selection process even continues into professional dancers' lives.

The various attributes that a dancer must have, and that are evaluated at each point along the way, are:

  • Physical: size, height, proportions, bone structure, muscle development, strength, flexibility. With the exception of strength and flexibility, most of this is genetic and out of your control.
  • Technical: natural/learned coordination, understanding of and correct execution of the style's vocabulary, posture, and movement requirements. How quickly you learn and master new choreography and varied styles is also important (particularly for SYTYCD). For each level and role along the way, there are increasing minimum technical requirements.
  • Work Ethic: how hard you work in and out of class and rehearsal, striving for excellence. If hard work and desire were all that was necessary to become a dancer, or a musician, or an artist, the world would be full of them. Every child who wanted to be a dancer would grow up to be one -- and would be ready for the same levels, roles, etc. all at exactly the same time. The world doesn't work that way in any area of endeavor, and dance is no exception. This dynamic continues into and throughout a professional career, where even years of commitment, admirable work ethic, and limitless desire do not always result in the roles and performance opportunities that each dancer desires.
  • Artistic: ability to express emotions, portray characters, convey subjective qualities; musicality; creativity. Both facial and body/movement expression are important.
  • Aesthetic: what you look like doing the steps, how closely you match the ideal lines and shapes of a dancer. Dance is an art form, not a craft or sport; there isn't a quantitative measure for aesthetics. What is deemed good, bad, desirable, etc, are subjective ideals, based on opinion, rather than a list of concrete facts. It's not just how high one jumps, or how many pirouettes, but how one looks doing them. The classical ballet (or jazz, contemporary, ballroom, hip-hop) aesthetic is difficult to define in words and it's impossible to achieve by following a simple list of instructions. In some casting, and certainly at the highest levels, aesthetics trump every other factor.
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And now some comments specific to SYTYCD. By the time the dancers got to Vegas, they had already been weeded out by minimum Physical, Technical, and Artistic standards. The different rounds in Vegas showed the judges:
  • Versatility of style
  • Ability to learn quickly (which in the world of dance is the ability to look at new movement and replicate it without needing to have it broken down in parts or taught) and ability to remember new choreography (which is the speed in which one develops muscle memory -- to move without the brain's detailed direction): Although some dancers are cut in Vegas for not learning the choreography accurately or quickly enough, that's when some are given a chance to dance for their lives -- because what the dancer has artistically and aesthetically can outweigh how quickly he/she learns. In the weekly shows, there's a lot of choreography to learn and rehearse, but they have more time than the hour or so they get for each routine in Vegas.
  • Work ethic: something we didn't see much on camera, but I'm sure is being evaluated.
  • Cooperation/Attitude: how one works with choreographers, and how one works with peers in the group challenge.
  • And increasingly in each round, artistic and aesthetic factors affect their decisions.

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Many thanks to Janet, and see you all tomorrow night!

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