Vegas Week

Judges: Napoleon and Tabitha, Mia Michaels, Debbie Allen, Mary Murphy, Nigel

Day 1

A hip hop routine by Napoleon and Tabitha starts off day 1 in Vegas. Popper Robert decides to quit because he found the choreography too hard and he didn’t want to drag a partner down with him. He says he knows he is going home anyway and doesn’t want to get someone else eliminated with him. Nigel calls him up on stage to ask him not to quit and to ask him to do his solo for the other judges who hadn’t seen him perform. Once again I think he’s interesting to watch but I don’t think it’s dancing. It’s contortionist work and some mime elements, set to music. It’s impressive, but it doesn’t surprise me at all to learn that doing group choreography was beyond him. He does his solo but the judges are not able to talk him into staying and he quits the competition.

The first choreographed routine doesn’t do much for me. Granted, they only got an hour to learn it, but it was just kind of meh for me. The judges were harshly cutting about half of the dancers in each group. The strip club DJ with the horrible facial piercings didn’t make it, nor did the girl who auditioned in LA and then two weeks later in Milwaukee with a different style and less sparkle.

The hip hop segment is interrupted by a gratuitous pool montage scene of the dancers who had made it through already, playing in the sun in skimpy bathing suits.

Back on stage the competition was continuing with the first round. Claire, the one with the foot injury season 2 and the pregnancy season 3 totally blew it. She stood there for several seconds watching the others in her group dancing before she could pick up the moves again. She’s cut. In all, of 203 dancers competed in the first round and 74 were cut, leaving only 129 for round 2.