In any event, tonight's episode featured the Atlanta auditions with guest judge Debbie Allen. You really should see some of my notes on these people. How I remember who is who is kind of ridiculous sometimes. Bacon girl, Dan Byrd lookalike, dumb chickens... I mean. Yeah. That's how I roll. But let's get on with it!
My favorite auditions, by far, were courtesy of the Dragon House Crew. Look, I get it, contemporary dancers are great and lovely and beautiful, but can I tell you something? I almost always love a great hip hop/pop locker more than I do a contemporary. There's just something way more exciting about it somehow, and also? It's not as common. The Dragon House Crew consisted of three equally outstanding performances by Boris Penton, Andre Rucker and Cyrus Spencer. I mean, major props to all three. Boris had a great unexpected piano music routine. Andre's was straight up weird, in a very cool way. And Cyrus was funny and robotic and charismatic. Now, whether these guys have what it takes to survive Vegas, I'm not sure. Just basing it on these performances alone, I'd say Cyrus has the best chance, but who really knows.
A few other hip hop dancers made waves as well, including the aforementioned Dan Byrd lookalike. Now, you're probably wondering two things: who is Dan Byrd, and who in the world looked like him? Dan Byrd's on Cougar Town. And the hip hop redneck kid Asher Walker (cool name, btw) truly looks just like him but with blonde hair. Seriously. Anyway! The kid was actually pretty good too, and was sent straight to Vegas. Tim Conkel was another hip hop style dancer, who I termed "manic pixie kid." For real, the kid was all over the place. Not to say he didn't have good tricks, but whether there's substance behind them remains to be seen. Finally, we have the duo of Damon Belmon and Deon Lewis, who apparently auditioned last year and had all this heat because they did an homage to Les Twins, and people thought they were ripping them off, yada yada. For this year's audition, they performed their own routine quite well, with a lot of humor, and were sent through to choreography, where only Damon made it through to Vegas. Again I'm not sure how he'll do in Vegas, but sometimes people surprise you, which is half the point of the show. Oh and I also should mention Jackson Alvarez, he of the spontaneous wobble lesson on stage, who had a cool hip hop contortionist style and made it past choreography to Vegas as well. I think he could do well, actually.
There were also, of course, a slew of lovely contemporary dancers featured as well, so many that they even had to basically fast forward through a few auditions with just some names and a couple seconds of footage. The ones who garnered more footage: Audrey Case (neck farter leg extensions), Danielle Dominguez (quirky Sonya bacon girl), Courtney Kirby (crying grandma with good transitions), and Brittany Ortner (kinda dumb chicken girl). Not trying to mean to that Brittany, but for real. She could not string a sentence together. I mean, they were all good. But the two contemporary dancers that I think outshined them were actually two guys: Joshua Alexander and George Lawrence II, who, strangely enough, both sported purple shirts. Why I notice that, who knows. I just like purple? Sure. But they were both really good. I'm not sure both of them can make it into the top 20, but their auditions were both great.
Oh, and yes, there was a belly dancer by the name of Janelle Issis, who they could not stop calling beautiful. Which, yes. She made it past choreography to get to Vegas as well.
Okay, that's about it for this week. Who were your standout performances?
Next week it's Salt Lake City!
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