So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) is always one of the summer’s top rated reality shows. SYTYCD is to dance what American Idol is to singing. Contestants some on and compete to be the best dancer. Last night’s performance show caused a bit of a stir with the viewing public. At the beginning on tonight’s results show, they had apparently received enough negative feedback that the producers felt they needed to address these issues.

Mia Michaels was up first. During last night’s show she wore a U.S. Marine Corp. dress blue jacket. Ok, no big deal. It seems that on the sleeve of said jacket the insignia was sewn on upside down. She had borrowed the jacket from a friend and didn’t even know it was an a USMC jacket, never mind that the patch was sewn on upside down. She basically just thought it was a cool fashion accessory. She made it clear that she was not trying to make any sort of political statement by wearing the jacket. Mia apologized if anyone was offended.

Once Mia finished up it was Nigel’s turn. Nigel is not only the show’s executive producer he is also one of its on air choreographers and judges as well. During the performance show, each of the dancers performed the same routine to the song Waiting on the World to Change by John Meyer while wearing white t-shirts with peace signs painted on them. It seems a portion of the viewing audience were disturbed by the anti-war theme of the routine. Nigel wanted to make it clear that while the routine was about a desire for peace because no country wants to be at war it was not intended as a commentary directed against the war Iraq.

I watched the episode and while I did notice that Mia was wearing a USMC coat (and I actually did notice the patch as well) it didn’t occur to me to be offended by it. It could be because I’m not a Marine. I have a lot of respect for those guys and I certainly won’t be the one to tell them not to be offended. I do believe Mia’s explanation. I’m not sure I buy the story about the individual routines though. I suspect that choreographer probably intended exactly what the audience was calling. I could be wrong though. It would have been nice if they had let him get up and discuss the piece instead of having Nigel make amends. Never the less, Nigel made his apologies and SYTYCD has probably learned it lesson about ensuring that the dance routines performed shy away from making any political statements.

SirLinksaLot: SYTYCD