Archive Posts

Matt Nguyen's career options once amounted to haircutting or maybe military service. But the 21-year-old dancer nicknamed "Dumbo" now makes $4,000 a month cutting up dance floors and battling fellow hip-hop artists. And after propelling to fame through a cable TV reality competition, Nguyen and his buddies from Southern California think their new career could last longer than the latest two-step.

"We used to just dance for fun," said Nguyen, frontman for Poreotics, a hip-hop troupe featured in Justin Bieber's latest music video as well as all over YouTube. "We didn't think it was going to be that big, but it's our life now," he said, as he waited to rehearse at the recent World Hip-Hop Dance Championships in Las Vegas.

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We still don’t know who will be crowned “America’s Favorite Dancer” next week, but we do know it won’t be Adechike. Forgot to set your DVR? The top three contestants who will appear in the “So You Think You Can Dance” finale next week are Kent (no surprise there), Lauren (who was looking a bit iffy after being voted into the bottom three last week), and Robert, whom Mia declared the “prince of the competition” on Wednesday night.We have to admit, the verdict is pretty fair.

For starters, we’re relieved that Lauren found her way out of the bottom three — she’s so perky and lovable that you almost forget to hate her for being a cheerleader AND student body vice-president. And, her dancing keeps getting better.

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Who would have thought that battling for the third spot in the "So You Think You Can Dance" season seven finale would be Robert "Zero screen time before the top10" Roldan and AdeChike.

How dare you deny us the beauty of that movement by being as silly as you've been" Torbert? That Alex Wong and Ashley Galvan would be history due to injury, and that Billy Bell would be voted off after several trips to the bottom three? It's been a wacky season.

It, however, is not surprising that Robert prevailed over AdeChike, particularly after AdeChike all but got shown the door the previous night by the judges. Joining him is Lauren Froderman, the last woman standing, the first dancer to move into the finale. "Last night I went to bed and I prayed that you would make it into the finale," Adam Shankman told her, "because you deserve to be on that stage dancing in it."

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Former Home and Away star-turned-Hollywood leading lady and Nike shoe designer, Sharni Vinson, has a few tips for Aussies males intimidated by the dance floor.Be confident, Vinson says.

A dude may have two left feet, but if he struts on the dance floor at the local pub or RSL thinking he is John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever or Fred Astaire in Top Hat, the chances are the opposite sex will be impressed.So, how do guys build confidence?

"Drink more. For guys, it seems to be the way, right? Have another shot?" Vinson laughs during a video interview in Los Angeles. "Your dancing gets better. "For girls it doesn't work. We're in heels and then it is just messy."

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So You Think You Can Dance's judges "went with America's voting," Adam Shankman told us after last night's show, in deciding to send home "brilliant" Billy Bell and the beloved but inexperienced Jose Ruiz. "America today basically voted Billy out," Adam added. "It makes me sad because he's so genius. The best dancer on this show has never won—ever. "

"It was a hard decision to make," Nigel Lythgoe told us, "[but] it wasn't a difficult decision. We took everything into account with what America's been voting...We weren't going to lose Lauren [Froderman] tonight—she's just too good to lose."

(They did lose Lauren—for a second—Wednesday night: "She was dehydrated and collapsed," Nigel said. Host Cat Deeley said, "I literally handed her over to a medic [onstage]—but I know that she's much better today." Whew!)

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Is there any doubt at this point that Kent Boyd is going to take it all on this season's "So You Think You Can Dance"? He's a wonderful dancer with a great personality, adorable, warm, guileless and utterly unthreatening to the pre-teen voting bloc.

There will be two dancers ousted tomorrow night; last week judges felt they couldn't make a decision because Billy Bell decided not to perform after injuring his knee (though his doctor had cleared him). The guest judge is professional ballroom dancer Toni Redpath.Kent with Anya Garnis, cha cha choreographed by Jean-Marc Genereux and France.

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New Chak Dhoom Dhoom Dance 2010 Win Sparsh Shrivastav: Thirteen super entertaining weeks, sixteen young dancing stars, four outstanding finalists and one grand finale, Rin presents Chak Dhoom Dhoom - Chhote Dancers ki Badi Jung came to an end with 11-year old, Sparsh Srivastav from Agra emerging as the winner. With that announcement the finale boomed with thrill, the stage exploded with pyros and an overwhelmed Sparsh screamed while his mom screamed louder! Bollywood Superstar, Akshay Kumar presented the trophy to the Junior Dance Champ as the audience cheered his terrific freestyle performance on ‘Aaj Fathe Chak Len De.

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I feel like I’ve been a little shortchanged over the last three Thursdays.  Well, that’s not entirely true: "SYTYCD" results shows have been delivering some wonderful dance performances (and some OK musical performances), but are we ever going to get a regular elimination, one where the solos actually mean something?

The episode kicked off with a great group number to "All That Jazz" with guest choreographer Lea DeLaria. I liked the Fosse-esque moves combined with the rather grubby, old-fashioned styling and set design of the piece, along with the toned-down version of the song. The dancers reminded me a bit of scrappy street performers, in a good way, of course.

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They are not just high academic achievers but skilled dancers too. A group of IIT Mumbai students surprised all by winning UTV Bindass' Street Dance show last week, proving that a passion could be pursued successfully without compromising on studies. The next destination for these dancers of today and engineers of tomorrow -- choreographer Shiamak Davar's dance classes.

The 13-member group called Insync consists of third year and fourth year engineering students. "We have been taking part in many competitions and came out victorious from most of them. So we wanted a new and bigger platform now and decided to go for TV show," Sushant Ratan, one of the members, told IANS.

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Yuri Grigorovich’s Spartacus is a ballet that needs all the help it can get. Although arguably more subversive than the Soviet culture police realised, this 1968 slab of propaganda can all too easily look like a lumbering old beast that should have been left snoozing indefinitely in the corner rather than being cruelly whipped back to life, and especially so to our more cynical, less melodramatically-inclined Western tastes.

What it demands, then, is a lead who can un-selfconsciously live and breathe the central role of the rebellious, love-lorn, enslaved gladiator, and fully rise to the Herculean technical challenges of Grigorovich’s solo steps, thereby both distracting us from the protracted and tedious panoplies of prancing soldiers and trudging slaves, and making even the more bombastic excesses of Khachaturian’s score seem perfectly judged.

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