Charleston, SC and Washington, DC played host to the So You Think You Can Dance auditions tonight. The first hour in Charleston started off badly with Erin the 30 yo ballroom dance instructor. She had only been an instructor for about 8 hours and probably won’t be a dance instructor for another 8 after they see her audition. The twins were cool. The first one blew his audition but after the second twin went the judges asked them both to perform a routine together. This got them a chance to go through to the choreography round and ultimately to Las Vegas. I’m sure that everyone was happy to see the returning Mom make to Vegas after a two year absence from the show.

Then it was on to DC for the second hour. Having spent many years in the Washington DC area, it was fun to see them interviewing the dancers in places I recognized and have been too like Freedom Plaza which is right by the Warner Theater where the auditions took place. The auditions in Washington were a little crazy. They said that they saw the widest range of dance styles during the DC auditions. Despite that I was really surprised that we didn’t see a single popper. During the first four hours of auditions it seemed like almost every other dancer was a popper. Phucdat ‘Goofball’ Nguyen was probably the craziest dancer. The judges used terms like ‘unusual’, ‘fun’ and ‘entertaining’. Danny was right when he said that he didn’t have faith that Phuc could do much beyond his trick laden routine. Phuc didn’t make it past the choreography round. Anthony the Juilliard grad didn’t make it again this year either. He acted like a real little b?t<# on the way out of the theater. Brenden was definitely one of the best all around dancers so far this season. He tried out a few years ago and almost made it until they found out he was only 15 year old. Tonight, he totally blew the judges away and went straight through to Vegas. I will be shocked if he doesn't make it into the finals.

During tonight’s auditions I made a number of observations about SYTYCD. First it has to be very hard to judge. There are so many different styles of dance and performers. Trying to compare them and figure out which ones will do well in the competition I think would be difficult. I’m not sure I’ve seen the judges disagree yet. There is no bickering over contestants like you see between Simon and Paula on American Idol for example. That may be because Nigel basically runs the show. The last observation I made is that, unlike other talent competition shows such as American Idol most of the contestants who make it through are basically highly trained and/or professional dancers.

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