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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: July 20, 2006
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: So You Think You Can Dance, “Top 10 Results” (Season 2, Episode 17) [Stream on YouTube]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: No amount of praise is sufficient for the sheer volume of artistry that So You Think You Can Dance has brought to American television every summer since 2005. It often feels crass to lump this show into the same bin as most other reality shows given how high the talent level is on a show like this. The dancers who show up on that stage every week, dancing multiple routines they learned in the span of the week, risking injury and embarrassment yet succeeding at synthesizing movement and music and story and concept into something truly beautiful should probably not be thought of in the same realm as Hell’s Kitchen.
While season 1 had some great talent (winner Nick Lazzarini; Blake McGrath), it often is remembered as a kind of lost season, when the show was still figuring out its format. It wasn’t until we got to season 2, and host Cat Deeley joined the family, that the show truly became the fan favorite it is today. Part of the reason the show stood out so strongly for its artistry is that it invited world-renowned choreographers to participate. One such choreographer, Wade Robson, gifted the show with its first truly groundbreaking group routine. Set to Irish chanteuse Roisin Murphy’s song “Ramalama (Bang Bang),” the concept was that the top 10 dancers would play ghoulish zombies who descended upon the stage and presented their (metaphorical) beating hearts to each other.
The marriage of movement and music is intoxicating, and the precision of the dancers’ moves — lurching and crooked and broke-necked — was so impressive. The group routine, performed the night of the Top 10 eliminations, proved to be one of the show’s most enduringly popular, and was reprised once at the season 2 finale and again (with Robson himself dancing, as seen above) at the 100th episode show.
