Well, I had a nice long post ready to go when my keyboard disagreed with me and blew it all up. Anyway, I was just going to agree with Kat on just about everything--loved Peter in the Wade piece, loving Kathryn so far, will miss Phillip's pretty face but he just always looked like a Broadway tapper and couldn't get his upper body movement past that, like Legacy so far but am waiting to see how he mangles ballroom, and thought that the tango was well done but paled in comparison to Brandon and Janette. I thought that Ryan should have been better, considering his background in ballroom should have given him a little more experience with the tango than Ellenore has.

Really liked the waltz (even though it should definitely have had more actual waltzing going on) and the Bollywood was excellent. Both hip-hop numbers were surprisingly good. I'll probably be keeping the Wade piece, Legacy and Kathryn's number, and the Bollywood for burning to disc later this season.

Some reactions:

Noelle & Russell: Loved that it was actually hip hop, but didn't like the tennis concept. And they were just too uneven as a couple.
Ashleigh & Jakob: Fine, but yeah, the choreographers blew it here. This reminds me of the Melanie leg-lift syndrome.
Bianca & Victor: Hated this.
Mollee & Nathan: I think I was watching a different dance than the judges because I thought it was sloppy and that it was obvious Mollee had no idea what she was doing.
Channing & Phillip: This was just awful.
Karen & Kevin: This dance had me liking Karen way more than I thought I ever would. She nailed it.
Kathryn & Legacy: I have a feeling that I will look back on this and realize that this is when I fell in love with Kathryn. And Legacy was way better than I thought he would be.
Pauline & Peter: Love. Love. Love.
Ellenore & Ryan: I think she didn't have her focus, but I attribute that to the dress glitch. Loved the drop.

Bottom three should have been: Noelle & Russell, Bianca & Victor, Channing & Phillip.
I would have sent Noelle and Phillip home.

meara, I wish that I knew of a way to get SYTYCD early. I am in the Chicago for work, thus I saw SYTYCD a full two hours early. What, what! Here's what I thought about the show tonight. Although y'all already know all about it because I always post it here first before it makes it into my blog. And now to bed. My body is telling me it's barely 10:30, but the clock is telling me otherwise.

It had a similar movement quality to his piece for Brandon and Janette last season in a lot of ways, and was a teensy bit reminiscent of his Triplets of Belleville piece for Chuy and Sarah.

That was the problem with it! It was all of Wade's moves, all in a row. I even saw an N'Sync move in there. It had nothing to do with the theme -- if you could even choreograph such a thing.

I love Wade, but just say zombies. It's about zombies. Stop biting Thriller and go back to where Hummingbird came from.

The bad: I was wide awake at 4am. The good: STYTCD on Tivo and the kids stayed asleep so I could watch it!

I thought that was one of the weaker Wade routines we've seen - I was negatively comparing it to Janette and Brandon the whole time. Also comparing the tango to J&B - I didn't get the laser intensity from Ellenor, I got a very flat affect. (I love Ellenor and her baby-talk Japanese and her channeling Katharine Hepburn, though!) The coping with the skirt problem was VERY professionally done - contrast the sheer terror in the Phillp/Channing routine, where nothing even went wrong.

I think Channing is an incredibly beautiful girl. I'd like to see her dance without looking terrified for a change, though. It's painful. Maybe she and Victor will get something happy next week.

I actually liked Noelle in the hip-hop. I wonder what the jidges' beef with Russell is. Clearly they have shifted their "up from the streets" narrative to Legacy (where it was more appropriate anyway.) Stacey Tookey wins the choreography prize. Jakob again wins the "you can do a jete every week" prize - but his feet are always ballet feet, when they should be ballroom feet. (Danny, despite his general awesomeness, also kept pulling me out of ballroom numbers with ballet feet.)

Didn't love the Bollywood - the camera work SUCKED, and they never did anything really FAST. What did I forget? Oh, Karen. Love Karen. Kevin is just okay. I think finding out he's modeling made me not respect him.

In sum: I was okay with the exits. Gosh, the tears on the staying dancers! Phillip, what a sweet spirit.

I could be making up a whole storyline that has no basis in reality, but I think part of the Channing/Phillip problem is that Channing is not a small girl and Phillip has no lift experience and not a hell of a lot of upper body strength from what I could see. I think she has been terrified of relying on him as a partner for lifts and catches and lead strength. Phillip always struck me as having up a big wall, holding a lot back and not throwing himself into things, but I realize that may be a really unfair assesment based solely on his smiley face.

I get the comparison of the tango to last season, but wasn't Brandon/Jeanette like the dead end of the season?

I think the Brandon/Janette tango was their last dance before they got to top 10, wasn't it?

My main problem with Phillip (in addition to his inability to do lifts that msbelle noted) was the carriage of his upper body. He couldn't get away from that very Gene-Kelly-esque stance even when he was doing the samba, and it detracted from the number.

Yeah, I had no problems getting rid of Phillip--he was much stronger as a solo dancer than as a partner, and that's just not what Show is about. I would have kept Bianca over Noelle, but I figured both of them would be gone early on in any case.

I actually thought Legacy did a pretty good job in their piece, as well as Kathryn. He had some really nice power moves.

Why assume that Bianca has danced like that before?

I thought Bianca said in the rehearsal interview that she was comfortable with the routine because that's what her church experience was like. I'm not sure if the judges saw that.

I'm glad she's gone, part was her attitude but also she hunches all the time when she dances. Even doing her style she had her shoulders pulled up to her ears. SLNRLBF is here visiting and we were watching and he asked "Does she have a neck?" The Broadway routine was meh. It was one of those routines that looks like it needs LOTS of people to make it work instead of just the the two dancers.

I liked most of the routines tonight. The Samba was a hot mess and I agree that a lot of that was probably Channing being afraid that she'd get dropped.

I thought Bianca said in the rehearsal interview that she was comfortable with the routine because that's what her church experience was like.

When I was in college in the south and going to a black church, my church experience was like that, too, but I didn't dance. That style of movement is going to be familiar to you if you've spent time in many Large, AA churches because lots of them incorporate praise dance. But as far as I know, she never claimed to have been on a praise dance team. I don't know. It just rubbed me the wrong way.

I'm still glad she's gone. I will never forget her stank attitude when she didn't make the show in S5 and nothing will convince me that she is not secretly stank.

On the Channing/Philip thing, I agree that Philip turned out to be a lousy partner and not a strong lead. But the thing with lifts is that the lady has to know how to help her partner out, how to hold her center and hold her own weight. If she doesn't know that, it makes it infinitely harder for the man to properly execute the lifts. And Channing, whether because of fear or inexperience or I don't know what, goes into those lifts like a wet noodle. And then she kind of just sits there and waits for her partner to throw her around. She's not helping at all, which is part of the reason why the exits to every lift that they did looked so clunky. I think it was just unfortunate that neither one of them seemed to have had much partnering experience.

And while I agree that it's kind of unfair to compare Janette and Brandon's tango at several weeks into the competition with Ellanore and Ryan's, I think even if they'd pulled that style during top 12 week, they wouldn't have come close to executing it as well as B&J did. Also, we've seen some really awesome tango performances early on in a season. I'm thinking of Mark/Chelsie in S4. Their tango is what solidified my Mark love and my intense obsession with Chelsie's feet and that was what? Like week three? I remain impressed, though, by their reaction to the wardrobe malfunction. They were total pros. I'd bet that's probably happened to Ryan's partners before, maybe even in competition, but Ellanore? She took that unfortunate challenge like a champ.