Note: Updated June 16
NBC’s new World of Dance set a rough road its first two weeks for fans of ballroom; similarly, the genre’s had more downs than ups on Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance, with the last real gasp in its last adult-focused season coming when Latin champ and SYTYCD Canada winner Denys Drozdyuk rejected a ticket to the top 20, citing the show’s clear maltreatment of his primary style.
So this week’s World of Dance installment, and SYTYCD‘s season premiere (with the show returning to its adult contestant format), offered some welcome glimmers in the form of married ballroom duos Drozdyuk & Antonina Skobina and Kristina Androsenko & Vasily Anokhin — though imperfectly so.
It’s no secret that SYTYCD and its viewership tend to heavily favor contemporary and jazz dance (seven of 14 adult winners hail from the genre — plus two more from contemporary’s progenitor, ballet — and countless more in the category have launched careers thanks to the show), and while World of Dance‘s proclivities are less certain at this early juncture, contemporary and hip hop with feeling have predominated thus far, particularly given less than stellar outings in Weeks 1 and 2 from the handful of Latin and ballroom dance duos and troupes. Make no mistake, though — SYTYCD has hosted some outstanding ballroom performers in its day. But since the first few seasons, only those quite young and hailing from the heavily cross-trained environment of Utah’s ballroom scene have made many inroads on the show; “older” European competitors have, if qualifying into the top 20 at all, been early exits, like season 8’s Iveta Lukosiute and season 11’s Malene Ostergaard (both out in first elimination). In terms of show achievement itself, season 10’s Paul Karmiryan (top 6) may have been the last most successful in the discipline — but he was also reasonably cross-trained, having previously won the show’s Armenian installment, and, importantly, a highly personable and attractive young man, perhaps an easier draw for some segments of the voting base than an intimidating ballroom female.
Given those parameters, then — and given a set of real-life romances underlying these ballroom partnerships — is it surprising that these media-savvy dancers would opt against the strictly ballroom audition and go instead for a more dramatic narrative approach, meshing an assortment of recognizable syllabus movements with extensive extension, lifts, and other elements associated more with contemporary than ballroom? Given the reception from SYTYCD‘s panel of judges, and at least two-thirds of World of Dance‘s, it seems to have been a canny move. But I can’t deny my disappointment at being deprived the pure stuff from two couples who, better than many others on competitive dance TV, could have delivered it:
