so you think you can dance (44 posts)

One of these Highland flingers popped, leapt and emoted his/her way into the hearts of America and waltzed off with the title on tonight's So You Think You Can Dance finale. But that wasn't the only surprise...

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The guys may have been running on fumes, but it was full steam ahead nonetheless.

Joshua Allen and Stephen "Twitch" Boss, neither of whom has any formal training and both of whom needed a weekend hospital visit to treat dehydration, joined fellow finalists Courtney Galiano and Katee Shean for the first night of So You Think You Can Dance's two-part finale and…

Well, if we knew exactly how to spell that sound Mary Murphy makes when she's super excited—that's how we would describe it.

The fab foursome performed five dances apiece, including a solo and a contemporary group number choreographed by Mia Michaels (and costumed by Braveheart), and kept—as they say in hip-hop speak—hittin' it all night.

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Inside sources are spilling juicy scoop on the biggest TV event of the summer! Um, no...not the Olympics. No...not the presidential race. (Pshaw!) I'm talking about tonight's final showdown of Fox's So You Think You Can Dance.

Want to know who's now part of a same-sex coupling? Why America's loudest mouth was struck mute? And what may have lead to the hospitalization of two dancers? Oh, you know you do.

Click here for five spoilers you probably shouldn't know about tonight's finale...

 

 

So You Think You Can Dance isn't heading to that big parquet in the sky just yet.

Fox has ordered a fifth season of the Emmy-nominated summer hit, to air next year.

"We're delighted to have Dance back for a fifth season next year," the network's president of alternative entertainment, Mike Darnell, said.

The unsurprising renewal news—SYTYCD is a perennial top performer, with its most recent episode drawing 8.6 million viewers—comes just days before the fourth season of the dance competition show draws to a close, with the two-night, four-hour season finale kicking off on Wednesday.

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So You Think You Can Dance is ready to hoof it up on the road.

Taking a cue from fellow reality-TV smashes American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, top contestants from the popular Fox competition are extending their 15 minutes of fame by going on tour.

Kameron Blink, Jaimie Goodwin, Lauren Gottlieb, Neil Haskell, Sabra Johnson, Pasha Kovalev, Dominic Sandoval, Lacey Schwimmer, Danny Tidwell and Sara Von Gillern—the top 10 finalists of the hit dance-off—will boogie through 14 U.S. cities with 49 dates through November.

Show creator and executive producer Simon Fuller, the man behind American Idol, says this is a natural extension of the show.

"We are thrilled with the tremendous growth of the show and excited to take So You Think You Can Dance across the country again to showcase this year’s world-class talent, he said in a statement," Fuller said in a statement. "Viewing the contestants performing on television does not even come close to experiencing them in-person. We look forward to having the country’s favorites hit the road, coming to a town near you."

In its third season, So You Think You Can Dance has proven to be one of Fox's most dependable summer hits, consistently ranking in Nielsen's top five.

Nowadays, a post-season circuit seems to be the norm for a hit shows, including Idol, Dancing with the Stars and even the Disney Channel phenomenon High School Musical. The tours not only extended the shows' time in the limelight, but also served to stoke interest in the upcoming seasons.

Jordin Sparks, Melinda Doolittle, Sanjaya Malakar and the rest of the top 10 finalists from this season of American Idol headline the Idols Live! summer tour, which runs through Sept. 22.

The Dancing with the Stars tour showcased contestants from several past seasons, including recent champ Drew Lachey and new Singing Bee host Joey Fatone, tangoing through 24 cities over the summer. The next Dancing contest literally kicks off Sept. 24 on ABC.

High School Musical teen heartthrobs Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Lucas Grabeel, Corbin Bleu and Monique Coleman just wrapped a U.S. tour where they performed hits from the series’ triple-platinum-selling soundtrack. Like Dancing with the Stars, the tour brought the hit musical to cities across the country and promoted High School Musical 2, which debuts Aug. 17.

Meanwhile, the TV version of So You Think You Can Dance continues every Wednesday at 8 p.m. with the results show every Thursday 9 p.m. on Fox. Goodwin and Bink were the latest two to be voted off. The finale is scheduled to air Aug. 16.

The tour kicks off Sept. 21 in Albany, New York, and wraps up Nov. 30 in Reno, Nevada.

 

Benji Schwimmer doesn't just think--he knows he can dance.

The 22-year-old swing dancer from Redlands, California, was crowned the winner of the second season of Fox's So You Think You Can Dance on Wednesday.

"Thank you so much, America! I love you guys," a tearful Schwimmer said after learning of his victory in the final seconds of the show.

More than 16 million viewer votes were cast to determine the somewhat surprising outcome of the live two-hour finale.

Runner-up Travis Hill had been favored by fans and judges alike to win after his performance won glowing praise during last week's episode, but in the end, viewers grooved to Schwimmer's moves.

The finale began with four dancers in the running. Donyelle Jones and Schwimmer's cousin, Heidi Groskreutz, were eliminated early on, leaving Hill and Travis to put their best feet forward.

The show also featured group dance numbers from the top 20 dancers, as well as feature performances by Fergie and Ciara.

As the victor, Schwimmer took home $100,000 in cash, a new car and a one-year contract to appear as a dancer in Celine Dion's Las Vegas show, A New Day, at Caesar's Palace.

"I am delighted to be the first one to congratulate Benji on becoming America's favorite dancer," Dion said in a pre-taped message.

Fox's fleet-footed reality competition has been a ratings powerhouse of late. For the week ending Sunday, Aug. 13, So You Think finished in third place, with 10.1 million viewers, edging out that other reality competition, NBC's America's Got Talent, which finished fifth, with 8.5 million viewers.

The network was pleased enough with the series' proven ability to dance its way to the top to order up a third edition last month.

What spells summertime more than a cantankerous British chef and a group of aspiring dancers hoping to leap their way into stardom?

Nothing, according to Fox.

With that in mind, the network ordered up new seasons of the popular summer series So You Think You Can Dance and Hell's Kitchen for 2007.

"These shows have been integral to our summer success, and we are excited to be bringing them back next season," Peter Liguori, president of entertainment for Fox Broadcasting, said in a statement.

So You Think You Can Dance rode American Idol's coattails onto the schedule in May, premiering the day after Taylor Hicks was declared the winner and drawing 10.8 million viewers still hungry for embarrassing auditions and the whittling away of self-esteem...on the road to dazzling performances and impressive routines, of course.

The competition show is hanging tough, averaging 9.6 million viewers on both Wednesday and Thursday nights. The final eight dance it out this week, with the eventual winner to receive $100,000, a car and a yearlong contract to perform in Celine Dion's Las Vegas show, A New Day. Busta Rhymes performs on Thursday's elimination show.

A two-part season finale airs Aug. 9 and 16.

Now in its second season, Hell's Kitchen, the U.K. import featuring celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey and a group of hopefuls hoping to become America's next big shot with a whisk, airs Mondays at 9 p.m. and has been pulling in more than 7.4 million people each week. The contender that best endures Ramsey's comical tirades and comes out on top gets an executive chef's position at a new fine-dining establishment in the Red Rock Casino Resort and Spa in Vegas.

Fox's renewals comes just days after NBC stocked its summer shelves, as well, ordering up second and fifth installments, respectively, of America's Got Talent and Last Comic Standing for next year.

So You Think You Can Dance has stepped on a few toes. Actually, 40 toes, to be exact.

Four people have filed a lawsuit accusing Dick Clark Productions, Fox Broadcasting and several other companies of ripping off their idea for the dance competition show now in its second season on Fox.

John Cassese, Mark Wolfe, Maria Lamagra and Brian Nelson are seeking an unspecified amount for damages, according to papers filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court and obtained by TMZ.com.

The disgruntled foursome state in their suit that they registered their vision of So You Think You Can Dance--including that same title--with the Writers Guild of America on May 12, 2003, and later discussed pitching the concept with reps from Martin Erlichman Associates (also a defendant named in the suit).

According to the lawsuit, Cassese, Wolfe, Lamagra and Nelson struck a verbal agreement with Erlichman Associates to get a pitch together which included that they would be paid for writing, directing and producing the show and would retain full credit for doing so. Afterward, they said, the arrangement was confirmed several times over the phone.

The plaintiffs say that the company contacted Creative Artists Agency on their behalf in September but they were told that CAA nixed the pitch. After September 30, 2005, the lawsuit states, Erlichman Associates was no longer returning the plaintiffs' calls.

So You Think You Can Dance premiered in July 2005. Its May 25 second-season premiere, hot on the trail of the American Idol finale, scored 10.7 million viewers and has managed to hang onto an average of 10.5 million people for each Thursday elimination episode. The Wednesday performance show is averaging a 9.7 million-strong audience so far.

Both So You Think You Can Dance and Idol are produced in part by the U.K.-based 19 Entertainment, founded by Simon Fuller.

Some of the supposed similarities between the Fox show and the plaintiffs' original idea listed in the lawsuit include:

It's a 60-minute show. It recruits contestants from around the country. A panel of professional judges--including a snarky British guy--evaluate the contestants. (That's not exactly how the complaint read, actually...) Non-competition scenes, such as practice sessions, are woven in with the performance sequences. The competition involves pairs dancing as well.

Actually, it's starting to sound a lot like Dancing with the Stars.

Another highlighted similarity between the show and the plaintiffs' master plan, per the lawsuit, was that "the final stages of the competition were to involve elaborate costume and set design to highlight the young, diverse, edgy nature and visual excitement of the concept."

Well, that's pretty much So You Think You Can Dance in a nutshell, but it remains to be seen whether all of the above occurred the way the plaintiffs say it did.

The full list of defendants is Dick Clark Productions, Fox Broadcasting Co., Martin Erlichman Associates, 19 Entertainment Inc. and "Does [as in John Doe] 1 through 50"--a series of unnamed defendants to be named at a later time.

The various offenses cited in the lawsuit include breach of contract, intentional interference with an economic relationship, breach of fiduciary duty (i.e. the plaintiffs are owed some money) and unfair competition (as in, Fox and all these other companies are pretty powerful).

Meanwhile, a special two-hour edition of So You Think You Can Dance Wednesday night features performances from the top 20 contestants. Nelly Furtado performs (in a vocal capacity, we presume) Thursday evening.

The dance fever has broken.

A summer of flashy moves, led by ABC's Dancing with the Stars, looks to be winding down in the shoes of So You Think You Can Dance.

Ratings for the Fox competition show (14th place, 8 million) were down more than 20 percent from its premiere in the TV week ended Sunday, according to Nielsen Media Research. Among all-important younger viewers, Dance remained a Top 10 hit.

Continuing to run the series through the paces, Fox will offer 90-minute editions of Dance on Wednesday and Aug. 10, when the final field of 16 will be revealed.

Although it's early, Dance is taking the opposite road of Fox's other notable summer entry, Hell's Kitchen. The latter reality show started out modestly, picked up steam and peaked Monday with a season-high 8.9 million viewers for the final hour of back-to-back episodes that saw Michael, the executive chef from Fort Collins, Colorado, knighted by harsh taskmaster Gordon Ramsay. Last week's installment finished in a respectable 20th place (7.4 million), and proved an even bigger draw among 18-to-49-year-olds than So You Think You Can Dance.

Perhaps Dance could use a little of Ramsay's fire. Or, probably more to the point, it could use a lot of Kelly Monaco's Dancing with the Stars' two-piece outfits.

Elsewhere:

Cable mounted an army of strong season premieres, led by Over There (4.1 million), producer Steven Bochco's Iraq war drama for FX. Other notables: MTV's Laguna Beach (3.6 million) and Lifetime's Rob Lowe miniseries Beach Girls (3.6 million).
The demise of Nate (Peter Krause) breathed new life into HBO's Six Feet Under (2.5 million).
No amount of buzz seems to be able to bring more viewers to HBO's Entourage, holding steady at 1.9 million hangers on.
A new Friday night episode of Disney Channel's That's So Raven (4.2 million) schooled reruns on ABC, CBS and Fox.
Among the Friday reruns that got schooled: Veronica Mars, the plucky UPN P.I. show getting a shot at the CBS schedule. While the ratings weren't great (3.3 million, 83rd place for the first episode; 3.2 million, 84th place for the second episode), they were greater than the 2.5 million the show averaged last season on UPN.
TLC's made-for-UPN search for a new member, R U the Girl with T-Boz & Chilli (87th place, 2.7 million), has proved about as quasi-compelling to viewers as INXS' made-for-CBS search for a new singer, Rock Star (averaging 5.3 million viewers for three episodes).
ABC's Brat Camp (seventh place, 8.9 million) was the week's most watched non-rerun; ABC's Empire (70th place, 4.2 million) was the week's most watched season finale for a show about ancient Rome that the modern-day United States largely ignored; Kathy Hilton of NBC's I Want to Be a Hilton (79th place, 3.6 million) was the week's most watched non-pay-per-download Hilton. Some of these accomplishments were relative.

Overall, CBS led the way in total viewers (averaging 7 million), and the 18-49 demo.

NBC ran second in viewers (5.8 million), followed by ABC (5.2 million) and Fox (5.1 million). UPN (2.8 million) made easy work of the WB (1.7 million).

Here's a look of the 10 most watched prime-time shows for the week ended Sunday, according to Nielsen Media Research:

1. CSI, CBS, 13.4 million viewers
2. Without a Trace, CBS, 11.3 million viewers
3. CSI: Miami, CBS, 10.3 million viewers
4. Two and a Half Men, CBS, 9.6 million viewers
5. Law & Order: Criminal Intent, NBC, 9 million viewers
6. NCIS, CBS, 8.96 million viewers
7. Brat Camp, ABC, 8.9 million viewers
8. Everybody Loves Raymond, CBS, 8.5 million viewers
9. Cold Case, CBS, 8.4 million viewers
10. Law & Order, NBC, 8.3 million viewers

So, you think you can be Dancing with the Stars?

Fox's punctuation-lacking musical question, So You Think You Can Dance, got off to a strong, if not-quite John-and-Carlotta-doing-the-tango hot start. The competition's two-hour premiere averaged 10.3 million viewers, good for third place in the TV week ended Sunday, per Nielsen Media Research. Among coveted younger viewers, So You Think... was number two with a bullet.

By comparison, ABC's Dancing with the Stars, prime time's biggest summer hit since the first season of American Idol, began its run in front of 13.5 million. By the time its six-week season ended July 6, 22.4 million tuned in the finale.

Dancing with the Stars teamed familiar faces, such as Seinfeld's John O'Hurley and General Hospital's Kelly Monaco, the eventual winner, with professional ballroom denizens. So You Think You Can Dance pits unfamiliar faces, ß la Idol, against unforgiving judges, à la Idol. Lest the Idol connection isn't clear, choreographer turned singer turned judge Paula Abdul has been tapped by the new series to "teach large groups of real people how to find their groove thing and really shake it." Her air date debut has not yet been announced.

Elsewhere:

Proving rhythm isn't everything, a rerun of CBS' CSI that featured little in the way of krumping was the week's number-one show in total viewers (14.6 million) and the 18-to-49-year-old demo.
Little watched on UPN, Veronica Mars (104th place, 1.7 million) gets a shot on its big-sister network beginning Friday when CBS airs back-to-back repeats of the P.I. drama. Mars reruns will remain on CBS' Friday schedule through Aug. 12.
MTV's The Andy Milonakis Show hasn't cracked Nielsen's top 15 basic-cable rankings, but its star has cracked the Lycos 50. According to the search-engine site's polling, Milonakis' name was the 34th most popular Internet search result for the week ended Saturday. (In the interest of saving others the surfing time: Yes, the little-brother-looking Milonakis really is pushing 30.)
ABC's Brat Camp, going up against the second hour of So You Think You Can Dance, slipped in its second week (seventh place, 9.36 million).
Big Brother 6 is holding steady on Tuesday (16th place, 8.1 million) and Thursday (18th place, 7.9 million). Unfortunately, for CBS, it's also holding steady on Saturday (54th place, 4.9 million).
Next time, perhaps the lead-singer-seeking INXS should just settle for a classified ad on Craigslist. In its second week, Rock Star, the band's CBS reality series, was down on Tuesday night (32nd place, 6.2 million), Monday night (42nd place, 5.5 million) and barely around on Thursday night (83rd place, 3.3 million).
The anticipation for Tuesday's finale of the ABC mini-series epic Empire (57th place, 4.8 million) is not building.

Overall, CBS won the week in total viewers, averaging 7.3 million; Fox won the week among younger viewers, thanks to So You Think You Can Dance.

Among total viewers, Fox averaged 5.8 million; NBC, 5.6 million; and, ABC, 5.3 million. UPN (2.8 million) widened its lead over the WB (1.7 million).

Here's a look of the 10 most watched prime-time shows for the week ended Sunday, according to Nielsen Media Research:

1. CSI, CBS, 14.6 million viewers
2. Without a Trace, CBS, 12.7 million viewers
3. So You Think You Can Dance, Fox, 10.3 million viewers
4. Two and a Half Men, CBS, 9.8 million viewers
5. Law & Order: Criminal Intent, NBC, 9.7 million viewers
6. NCIS, CBS, 9.39 million viewers
7. Brat Camp, ABC, 9.36 million viewers
8. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, NBC, 9.2 million viewers
9. Law & Order, NBC, 9 million viewers
10. CSI: Miami, CBS, 8.9 million viewers