So You Think You Can Dance? As a matter of fact, I do!

Next week is the SYTYCD season finale and let’s face it – the winner will either be Sasha or Melanie. As a former dancer myself, I want to share a few thoughts about these two superlative creatures.

I’ll state outright that I’m Team Melanie. Here’s why:

Melanie combines perfect technique with an artistry that is un-matched in this competition. Each and every movement is completed to its absolute limit – she dances through to the end of her very fingertips and then out beyond them. There is a fullness of movement that is glorious to watch. Each step is given such integrity, even a "mere” plié – and by using quotation marks my pointe (ha!) is that there is no such thing as a “mere” plié and this is something that I think Melanie inherently understands. There is an articulation to her dancing that makes me cry, so stunning is it to watch.

Sasha is incredibly talented, there is no doubt about that. But over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed something that bothers me. Yes, she is a generous performer, giving herself fully to her partner(s) and each piece. As the judges have commented many times, she dances with terrific abandon. But I’m often left with the feeling that I’m watching someone perform a series of steps rather than a cohesive assemblage of those steps. (The exception to this was her routine with Twitch which was extremely exciting and in my opinion her most successful). I often feel her rushing – that in her obvious love to dance she gets caught up in a whirlwind and doesn’t settle into the piece. This is especially true (for me, at any rate) in her solos which seem hurried and distracted – they strike me as more a collection of unconnected steps, unlike Melanie’s which have a throughline, a story that she is telling. (This criticism of the solos – these disjointed leaps and tricks that leave me cold – can be applied to many dancers on this show, both of the current season and of seasons past. The desire to show off and the ridiculous 30 second rule mean that few of them risk stillness, even a moment of it. Nor do many of them seem to construct their solos in a thoughtful manner – again there is a lack of storytelling that irritates me. And by storytelling I don’t mean the oftentimes cheesy narratives that the choreographers give to the routines on this show. I’m speaking of storytelling in a more abstract way).

When it comes to Melanie, I can think of several routines that standout – naturally her first one with Marko, the Travis Wall choreographed “Statues” piece, the lyrical hip-hop with Marko, the Mandy Moore routine with Neil (and I cannot believe I’m complimenting a MM piece), the recent Spencer Liff routine with the mirror, her solo this past week (the one Lil’ C called “beefy”), and the Sonya Tyah piece with Sasha, during which, try as I might, I couldn’t take my eyes off Melanie. I re-watched it in order to focus solely on Sasha and my attention kept getting pulled to Melanie.

Now, dance, like all art, is subjective. Whichever of them wins this competition, they will both be just fine and go on to highly successful careers, I’ve no doubt. I like Sasha a great deal and am thrilled to see her in the top 4. It seems highly likely that the top 2 dancers will both be women, a first for this series (correct me if I’m wrong on that) and that is tremendously exciting.