I was soooo disappointed to lose Janette from SYTYCD this week. The other three girls are great, but I thought Janette brought such a bright presence ... these lyrical/contemporary girls have terrific technique but to me, they all tend to look alike after a while. I am going to have to transfer my want-to-win vibes to Melissa, for her maturity.
Of the three remaining girls, only one (Kayla) has turned in a really good ballroom performance - that samba at the beginning of the season. I suspect a lot of that was due to her partner. Why is ballroom dancing so hard for these talented, well-trained dancers?
Mr. P and I were discussing that and we have a couple of theories. I think what it boils down to, though, is in lyrical and contemporary dancing, the partnering is all choreography, and the choreography rules the performance. If it's a partner piece, each movement is defined for the dancers by the choreographer, and changing anything - any piece of styling, any arm position, any facial expression - might substantively change the dance. There's only so much of the dancers' own personality or relationship that should be brought to the performance.
In ballroom, the routine may be choreographed, but the fact that the partners are working within specific figures (that a judge must be able to recognize) means that the partnering is more than half of the performance. The figures, footwork, body actions to a certain extent, and even arm stylings may be predetermined by the dance genre.
Cha-cha arm stylings, for example, are subtly different from rumba or mambo or any other latin dance, and all latin dances are different from any of the smooth or standard dances. This raises the difficulty level for lyrical/contemporary dancers, since they are used to drawing on the same dance vocabulary for every performance and you can't do that in ballroom. Each ballroom dance has its own character.
What this means is that you can't just create any old movement and call it a cha-cha or a waltz. You have to use movements that make sense in that genre. Whence the individuality of a performance really derives is thus the partnering. And lyrical/contemporary dancers, at the ages of most SYTYCD contestants, simply don't have the experience in life OR in dancing to create expressive partnering. It seems, in most SYTYCD ballroom performances, that just getting the foot placements and body actions is such a challenge that the contestants can't manage more than a broad caricature of the dance's character.
There are always exceptions, of course. Last season, Courtney turned in great rumba performances with both Gev and Joshua. But I think one of the reasons Debbie Allen is so done with paso doble is that most of the contestants can't really express these dances unless they already have a ballroom background, and all the pasos end up looking the same.
That's my theory, anyway. And that's why I'll really miss Janette, because with all her energy and brightness, she brought that understanding of partnering. If Evan had given her something to work with, that last rumba would have been a completely different animal and I think we would have seen someone else going home.
Comments