I’m gonna start writing this post as I watch the show. I can do that now on my awesome new Asus EeePC Netbook. Damn, I love this little sucker. No, I’m not working for Asus. Don’t you know that about me? I tend to evangelize products and companies I like without them having to pay me a dime. Isn’t that smart of me?! :S

Anyway, Russel’s first dance just finished… his hip hop routine that was was supposed to be with Ashleigh. God, what a drag. As you may know, I watched the show live last night. So if Adam was disappointed that he didn’t get to see Ashleigh do hip hop, imagine me.

But I’m not complaining. I had a blast at the show. If you were looking out for me, you may have spotted me in the section behind Nigel. I was all the way to the left, so on a standard def TV I’m probably cut off, but in HD you can see me pretty well. I looked up at the monitors early on… I winked at myself… which is a big no no, but I couldn’t help it.

There’s a shot of me from above where I’m totally leaning forward on the rail listening intently to Nigel. Vanalam, I think that’s the one you tweeted about.

Okay, so I’m imaging some of you are curious about how seeing this show live differs from what we see on TV… and there are quite a few differences…

… the first and perhaps the most obvious being… the theater…. it’s not a theater. It’s a sound stage made up to look like a theater. In fact, the new proscenium stage helps that out considerably. But really the space is just a big open hangar with three sets of audience risers and that stage. All the walls are painted black to give the illusion of vacuous depth, and anytime they go to a wide shot, the lens on the camera is an extremely wide, slightly warped one, making the space look about twice if not three times as big… including the stage itself.

I wish I had a picture, but unfortunately they’re very strict about photos during the show. I didn’t even dare take it out of my pocket. I actually know someone who, um… got their phone taken away from them last night because they didn’t put it away like they were instructed. *this is me making an “I told you so” face*

I estimate the total number of people in the audience (including the mass of people standing in front of the stage) was about 500. That standing group was about 200. Which is a lot, I suppose… but less than it looks on TV to my eye.

The Judges… come across exactly the way they do on TV. They chat with the audience between breaks and before the show, and they all seem… utterly… genuine. I joke about them here a lot, but I was really pleased with what I saw. I expected there to be a sort of wall up between them and the audience, but not at all. I was also expecting to see a lot of TV magic, redoing takes, fake sounding dialog. But there really wasn’t a whole lot of that either. It ran very smoothly. The show we watch on TV is 2 hours long with commercials. This was about 3 hours long including a 15 minute warm up and observing all the commercial pauses.

That’s not to say there wasn’t any TV magic. There were a few things I had to chuckle about and couldn’t wait for the episode tonight to compare. I’m gonna try to list some of the moments I remember:

The first, and biggest, I guess, was that they had to reshoot Ashleigh’s first bit. Something in her explanation, about the physicians not clearing her to dance, wasn’t sitting well with the producers. So they asked her to do it again. I imagine the note came from the director, but Nigel actually did the clarifying. He said something to the effect of… “We can’t have you say that, darling, because it sounds like we’re not letting you dance.”

So they shot it again, and they tried to recreate the spontaneity of the first take. It was pretty convincing… turns out though, what they ended up using in the show was the original take. So I’m really not sure what happened.

Here’s something interesting that I didn’t know. All of those little solo introduction dances that we see at the beginning of the show while Cat is introducing the dancers? They shoot that at the end of the show. Our show actually began with Cat walking out onstage saying, “All incredibly talented, but only one will be crowned America’s favorite dancer!” And most of the newbies like myself were like, “huh?”

Oh and by the way, Cat… I gotta give her a shout out. She. looked. amazing. Gold jumper and all. And those heels… were… massive. That was actually a big surprise… Cat is not as tall as I thought she was. I mean, I don’t think she’s short or anything… I just always assumed she was over 6 feet. Hmm.

The end of the show after Cat says, “Stay tuned for your local news, I’m Cat Deeley… G’Night,” the dancers start doing that funky little group dance. That had to be the. most. ridiculous part of the evening… and I have to imagine (based on my own stage experience) the most loathed part of the episode for those dancers.

They seriously shoot it for about 2 or 3 minutes… much longer than we actually see. The dancers are like… miming to each other, trying to come up with silly improvisational dances to do with one another, laughing like, “oh man, that was hilarious what you just did. That spin. Do it again.”
“You want me to do it again?”
“Yeah, do it again.”
“Okay, I’ll do it again.”

And everyone in the audience is just standing there watching them as camera men are swooping around their little pool. It’s funny. Seriously, I’m totally laughing right now as I’m typing this paragraph.

The dances:

In the broad sense, what we saw on TV matched what was presented live. Very little editing magic to change the tone. That’s to say, the enthusiasm for the dances, the skill level, the general quality of what you saw was very close to what I saw. That may not be the case with other episodes… but last night it was.

The main difference comes in how the camera influences the dance, versus how it is to experience it live from one spot. And in that way, my opinion did change on one particular piece I saw tonight: Legacy and Ellenore’s first routine.

It was received just as well by the live audience as it was by TV audiences. But to be honest, I wasn’t really blown away by the piece when I saw it live. I wasn’t sure why everyone was so excited about it. It seemed like a lot of pushing and jumping around, and I guess from my angle it didn’t have the rhythm of dance. The music didn’t help either.

I thought maybe some unseen TV magic was sort of coaxing the audience. In fact, when Nigel mentioned that Mandy’s table routine got her an Emmy nom and that this one may do the same for Travis… there was this odd little bit Travis did for the camera. A sort of “pinch me am I dreaming?” It looked so phony to me that I actually thought he was mocking Nigel.

But then when I saw the dance tonight, I was like, “wow, that’s not at all what I saw yesterday.” I mean it was. I remembered everything they were doing… but seeing it so close… all the pushing and pulling made sense suddenly. And was EXTREMELY rhythmic. And they used a tiny piece of that Travis “pinch me” bit, and it didn’t look nearly as strange to me either.

Maybe I was placing too much of my own interpretation on things at the live show… maybe they fed me a new interpretation tonight when I watched it on TV. Or maybe it’s a little of both. Probably that.

There was another dance that had a slightly different ring on TV than it did live. It was actually Ellenore and Legacy’s second dance. I mean clearly, it was the weakest dance of the evening. But live, it stood out even more so. If my memory serves me, the judges actually spoke a bit longer about why they didn’t like it (Adam mentioned how difficult it was for him to hear that particular song remixed), and in an evening full of eye popping performances, there was a general feeling that this one fell flat on its face. I felt horrible for Nappy Tabs actually. They seemed pretty bummed.

But this is interesting… remember when the judges finished their critique and there was a moment of pause before the audience began to boo. They suddenly went in close on Cat. She said, “well, not everyone agrees, so if you want to keep Legacy and Ellenore….”

You know the moment I’m talking about, right?

Well, that close up shot… was picked up (redone) at the very end of the show. And if you notice we only see a little bit of Legacy’s head popping out of the right of the screen. Would you believe me if I told you that Ellenore wasn’t even there for that close up? Well, she wasn’t.

TV magic.

So for some reason the producers wanted to remind us… that “not everyone agrees”. And yet earlier in the evening when the piece was actually being critiqued, the audience seemed pretty much in agreement that it was weak. And then when I watched it tonight, that entire number seemed brushed over… the blow had been softened.

Why? Not sure? Was it to try to save those dancers? Was it out of respect for Nappy Tabs?

As for the other numbers, I’d say what was aired matched pretty well. But it’s hard to explain how amazing Jakob is to watch live. It really is something you rarely see. I grew up around a lot of talented dancers in my life because of my sister, and I was still so in awe seeing that guy perform. His lines are seriously… hard to believe. He’s like a young Tiger Woods of dance. If I found out the guy was a dance android sent from like a thousand years in the future… okay, now I’m exaggerating. The guy is amazing, and I’m glad I got to see him.

That goes for Legacy’s crazy skills too. And Legacy’s family, who really were EVERYWHERE wearing those T-Shirts.

The judges said Mollee was coming into her own tonight. 100% in agreement. Look, I can’t say I love her solos… they’re just not my thing. They’re bouncy and jumpy and just feel more like gymnastics to me. But her waltz was breathtaking. And there’s no question that girl was made for Broadway. This was the episode where I totally fell in love with her dancing.

But Kathryn was, in my opinion, the standout of the evening. And I hope America agrees… I mean, just in terms of performance, skill, and maybe even a bit of our own expectations. That cha cha got a genuine standing ovation not just because it was good… but because it was so unexpectedly good. A huge release of audience tension because she totally nailed a dance we thought she’d have a lot of trouble with.

Okay and I thought she was sexy. There.

Oh and that moment with Ryan where he asked people to vote for Ashleigh instead of him? They didn’t edit that at all… and it really did seem totally impromptu. I bought it both at the live show as well as on TV. Although, there did seem to be a current running through the episode encouraging audiences to vote for her. What did you guys think of that?

Aww man, and here’s another priceless moment from the evening… it turns out the blond hip hop assistant who danced with Russel is the cheerleading coach of a group of girls who were standing near the stage. I guess she invited them to see the show. Anyway, during one of the breaks, a squeaky little voice suddenly shot out of the crowd “One, two, three!” And suddenly a big cheer, “You go, Coach Rachel!” The comedian guy who warms up the crowd was like, “what did you girls just say?” Again the squeaky little voice, “One, two, three!” and then the cheer “You go, Coach Rachel !” It was so friggin cute. I hope I’m doing it justice.

What else? Oh, they added in that line for Adam where he says, “Nigel thinks Legacy was calling in for himself.” That was shot a couple minutes later. They edited it really well. I definitely wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t seen it.

I know I like to joke about all of my conspiracy theories, and if anything, seeing it live dispelled a great deal of them. But, this is TV, and good TV requires that magic. And they’ve been refining it for 50 years, so it better do its job.

I’m not trying to expose any of this as a jab at SYTYCD. On the contrary, I think all of it is a testament to the extraordinary craftsmanship of shows like this… the producing… and directing! It’s a story, after all.

I guess, since I work in this industry, none of these are big revelations to me… but it’s nice to be reminded of the kind of talent behind the scenes. The stage managers, the guys who keep the crowd on its toes during the breaks… the camera men who fly around the stage like dancers themselves.

It was an amazing evening.