All the right moves
Shall we dance, ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” asked viewers.
The mildly astonishing answer was: Heck, yes.
Pairing professional hoofers with celebrities of varying degrees of talent or klutziness – former boxing champ Evander Holyfield was game, but no Astaire, or even Ali – the show challenged them to dance styles not seen in most clubs.
“Dancing with the Stars” caught the audience’s imagination, with more than 22 million people tuning in to the July 6 finale. Overall, it was the most-watched summer series in five years, since “Survivor” debuted in 2000.
Now another entry, “So You Think You Can Dance,” is poised to show it has the right stuff.
From the producers of “American Idol” and Dick Clark, the Fox series, which debuts Wednesday, follows roughly the pattern of the network’s hit singing competition.
Viewers pick the winner of a potentially career-building prize. For “Idol” singers, it’s a record deal. For the dancers, it’s $100,000 and an apartment in New York for a year, putting them within a high-kick of Broadway.
The 16 finalists will be randomly teamed up each week and told to strut their stuff in styles old and new, from ballroom to salsa to hip-hop.
It’s time to bring couples dancing back, says series producer Nigel Lythgoe, who started as a dancer and choreographer in his native England and worked with such stellar talents as Gene Kelly on TV specials.
“I wanted to go back to, ‘Hey, you can take somebody in your arms and dance,’ ” he says. “What happened to the great American proms we see so much in movies? Now it’s all turning into dance battles.”
As for “So You Think You Can Dance,” he says, “It’s still competition, but it’s not combative.”
“American Idol” creator Simon Fuller and Dick Clark Productions had initially teamed to revisit Clark’s “American Bandstand.” But they decided an updated format was in order and called on Lythgoe to create a contest.
“So You Think You Can Dance” opens with 50 contestants – both amateurs, and pros between jobs – who were chosen at open auditions in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.
Asked what he observed at the tryouts, Lythgoe cites a startling number of belly dancers: “I’ve been to the Middle East and never seen so many belly dancers as in this country. Maybe it’s something they do to keep fit.”
More importantly, the experience reinforced for him the importance of training and the general lack of it in contemporary dancing.
“Once you pirouette on your head, you’ve got to remember that dancing’s also done on your feet,” Lythgoe says.
“And they weren’t very good when you took their tricks away from them,” he adds. “Once we put them with a choreographer, there were very few people who could pick up (steps).”
Top choreographers will help whip the contestants into winning shape. They include Mia Michaels, Brian Friedman, Dan Karaty, Alex Da Silva and Mary Murphy, who count such pop stars as Celine Dion and Britney Spears in their collective credits.
The choreographers also will serve as judges, whittling the dancers down to four finalists. Viewers will choose the winner.
Today’s talent contests echo “Dance Fever,” which debuted in 1979 and aired in syndication through 1987, on which couples were judged by celebrities including Tina Turner, Sammy Davis Jr. and actor-dancer Donald O’Connor.
Deney Terrio, who hosted the disco-fueled “Dance Fever” and has a disco music program on Sirius Satellite Radio, is pitching his own pairs-oriented project to TV networks.
“I think romance will never die,” says Terrio, who coached John Travolta for “Saturday Night Fever.”
“People like dancers who can do the gymnastics and other moves, but there’s nothing like a couple – how am I going to say this – making love on the dance floor,” he says.
As for “So You Think You Can Dance,” he adds: “Look out, guys. Women will be watching the dance show and saying, ‘Why don’t you dance like that?’ “