So You Think You Can Dance recap: Who's Got the Moves?

Show of hands: On last night’s So You Think You Can Dance second two-hour audition episode, who cared to see anything more than 30 seconds of Alvin Antoine ”Tony” ”The Tony Style” ”Has Panic Attack After Blandly Bad Audition To Get More TV Time” Riendeau? Or Wislande ”I Wear This Shirt That Cuts Off Before My Bosoms Because Sometimes My Arms Get Cold” Letang? Or Dustin ”A Backstreet Boy Is My Second Cousin And I’m Still Pretending To Think It’s Lame When I’m Actually Still Totally Stoked And Bragging About It When I’m A Very 35 Looking 22” Dorough? Hands? Anyone? No? I thought so.

Okay, now a show of hands: Who wanted to see far more than the 15 second morsels we got of Alex ”Shoulder Pops And Freaky Flexibility” Wong, Henry ”Seen So Briefly That There’s Nothing To Put In Quotations Marks” Rivero, and Megan ”My Sister Auditioned In Another City And Got The Full Audition Segment Treatment Because She Had Hip Reconstruction Surgery And All I Got Was A Lousy 15 Seconds Of Screen-Time Even Though You’d Think The Producers Would Be Desperate To Play Up As Much ‘Will Both Incredibly Talented Sisters Make It To Vegas?!?’ False Drama As Possible ” Kinney? Hands? Everyone? I thought so.

The Miami and Memphis auditions too often sacrificed showcasing good-to-outstanding dancing for the sake of silly-to-stupid segments on boringly bad dancers, mildly diverting montages on bad audition techniques, and guest judge Tyce Diorio’s general bitchery. I had walked into the episode with such high hopes, too, after last week’s mostly-stellar season premiere, which was marred only by Nigel Lythgoe and his fellow producers’ continued icky sniggering around any male dancers who dare to dip into the dreaded pool of feminine movement. Yes, I digress, and I should point out that Nigel has since apologized for those particular remarks on last week’s show, insomuch as they were interpreted as homophobic. And since I’m on the topic, I should also point out that last night’s episode served up a curiously timed segment featuring Travis Prokop, a spirited, 20-year-old dancer with a somewhat feminine manner, who had tale of childhood torment at the hands of those who found his dancing less than macho, and a touchingly supportive high-school-football-coach father. (I’d call shenanigans on the segment’s timing, in fact, if the producers hadn’t clearly been taken with Travis’ story from the start and sent cameras back to capture his New Mexico hometown.)

But that lovely interlude came late in the show during the Memphis auditions. For the Miami half of the needlessly padded two-hour episode, we were treated to far too few standout moments. Yeah, Romula Villverde’s got a jaw (and, er, two other body parts) of steel for flawlessly executing partner Janette Manara’s horizontal kick and flip, and they definitely improved over their split-decision audition last year by both winning immediate trips to Vegas. But to my (admittedly untrained) eye, their quite literally tricked-out salsa steps contained very little actual dancing. The only thing I recall about Paris ”Former Miss Washington” Torres’ audition was her choice of a haunting, broken-down-music-box cover of Britney Spears’ ”Toxic” as her song. Likewise, I was too distracted by Mary Murphy clutching her proverbial pearls (and Nigel’s actual arm) after Geo ”Feathered African Headdress” Smith attacked the judges’ table to remember anything about Smith’s audition other than his feathered African headdress. And Joseph Smith showed off some strong showmanship and decent hip hop moves, sure, but his TV time was most notable for his tenacious determination to get Cat Deeley to help him force ”Sha-wham” and it’s amped up cousin ”Sha-wiz-am!” into the popular lexicon. That said, it was incredibly satisfying when Nigel used Joseph’s catchphrase to shush Tyce ”Thinks He’s Auditioning For The Guys & Dolls Broadway Revival” Diorio’s incessantly self-satisfied trap. (Speaking of Tyce and revivals, has anyone seen Every Little Step, the fabulous doc about the auditions for the revival of A Chorus Line? Tyce is in it, auditioning for the ”I Can Do That” song, and he’s just as obnoxiously full of himself as he was last night. And he gets cut. It’s glorious.)

NEXT PAGE: The Gokey effect

Only Eric ”Silky” Moore and Talia Rickards really stood out from the Miami audition — and for very different reasons. Silky incorporated some hip hop and breakdancing into his show-stopping tap routine, winning over all three judges so completely that he may become the show’s first tapper to make it to the Top 20. Talia, on the other hand, pulled a Danny Gokey, talking at length about the accidental death of her young husband of four years with a framed portrait of him hanging conspicuously over her shoulder throughout her interview. Yes, this is questionable behavior on a performance competition show in which one succeeds by becoming the viewing audience’s ”favorite dancer.” But here’s the thing, and please feel free to call me a total hypocrite in the message boards for saying this: I felt for the poor girl, and, for that matter, for Memphis auditioner Anna Dunn, who spoke eloquently of using dance to help her work out how she felt about her father, who had taken his own life a year earlier. Maybe I’m willing to cut Talia and Anna far more slack than I am the Gokester because I know that, in contrast to their American Idol cousins, even the dancers who win SYTYCD face a far, far less glamorous life after the show is over — and have to work much harder for it. In any case, both of these women let their emotional states bleed a bit into their dancing, and I’m keen to see how far they make it in Vegas, and how much the show decides to remind us about their respective heartbreaks. Perhaps, I won’t be feeling quite as magnanimous about winning audience sympathy (i.e. votes) with personal tragedy the tenth time Cat Deeley uses the phrase ”widow Talia Rickards,” as I was the first.

Before we get to the rest of the Memphis auditions, however, we must first pause for the following poem:

Electric is

a mix of

minimal amount of

break dancing,

a large amount of

popping and locking,

a lot of

fluid movement,

cheerleader to the music,

styles of symmetry, and performance

art.

— Chris ”Boy George Auditioning For Bring It On” Carrozza

(That last nickname-in-quotation-marks joke — and, I promise, it really is the last one, for today — is courtesy my boyfriend, who is on only his second SYTYCD episode ever. He’s a fast learner, that one.)

Anna and Travis weren’t the only high points in Memphis, which was chockablock with genuine talent: Marico Flake, a young cop who specialized in the local style ”Memphis Jukin,” an underground street dancing genre that was familiar to, of all people, Mary Murphy; twin contemporary dancers Lauren and Lydia Guerra, the former best at emotional performance, the latter at technical power; and Caitlin Kinney, a sylph-like contemporary dancer with the aforementioned screen-time-shafted sister whose effortlessly fluid audition was my favorite of the night.

And then, in what’s become a trend of these audition episodes, we had the thrilling return of Evan Kasprzak, the Broadway dancing fiend who — like Brandon Bryant and Natalie Reid last week — came back to the show even though he was inexplicably cut at the last possible moment from last season’s Top 20. This time, Evan brought his older brother Ryan, and by ”brought his older brother,” I mean, ”convinced his older brother to hop into his time machine and zap from 1949 to 2009.” Guest judge Lil C was right to wonder aloud if Evan can leave his Gene Kelly stylings behind in more modern genres, but jeebus is this kid a breath of fresh air. And although I don’t know how fresh the air was in Ryan’s well-employed whoopee cushion, I cannot wait to see if the elder Kasprzak can deliver on his claim to be trained in multiple genres. Ryan even claimed to have choreographed his little bro’s entire audition; if Evan’s not careful, he may see himself edged out of the Top 20 yet again, but this time by his own flesh-and-blood.

What did you think of the Miami and Memphis auditions, SYTYCDers? Were you as curiously entranced by twins Jennifer and Jessica Guadix’s out-of-sync synchronized slow-motion booty-flopping train wreck of an audition as I was? When was the moment you turned on Tyce? (For me, it came early, when he repeated ”quirky, kooky Tony” as some kind of brilliantly veiled taunt.) Did you get a good chortle when Mary slyly noted Wislande Letang’s crotch thrusting was clearly meant only for fellow judge and staunch heterosexual Nigel? And can anyone explain to me why Tyce kept repeating ”shah-say” (which I’m guessing is actually the ballet term chassé) when speaking about Wislande’s crotch thrusting? Other than to hear the sound of his own voice, I mean.