It's results time on So You Think You Can Dance, and we'll see, among other things, whether Annapolis dancer Caitlin Kinney and Oxon Hill dancer Karla Lopez make it to the next round.
Right off the bat, Caitlin learns that she is safe, but Karla is in the bottom three couples, along with her partner Jonathan, Asuka, Vitolio, Tony and Paris. I had predicted that Asuka and Vitolio and Tony and Paris would probably be in trouble, but I'd forgotten there would be three couples in the bottom.
After a professional tango performance, it's solo (aka "dance for your life") time.
Paris is up first, and her dance is lovely and nice, but not super energetic. She does do this impressive move where she goes from being up on one toe with her other leg extended behind her to suddenly being on the floor -- I totally gasped.
Tony is next, and he does a lot of goofy moves, but nothing really that enthralling. His strong suit is supposed to be comic hip-hop, but this was pretty boring. I predict he's out without even seeing any of the other guys.
Asuka has the disadvantage of typically being a partner dancer, which always makes for slightly odd solos, but she makes the best of it and works the whole stage with a lot of fancy -- and speedy -- footwork.
Vitolio does a solo that showcases his strength and power -- and I'll assume technique, but my forte is TV not dance. He looks pretty good to me, though.
Karla makes the bold move of dancing to Aretha, and her solo is OK, though it seems to involve a fair amount of running around the stage.
Jonathan shows off his turning action, his tumbling and his hip action in his solo. Cat seems impressed.
Cat dismisses the judges so they can decide who is out. In the meantime, Sean Kingston performs, and I get to use my fast-forward button.
Nigel Lythgoe says they were unanimous in their decision for the women. He tells Karla that her solo was strong, but she needs to make sure she doesn't do just a series of steps and to bring more personality. But she is safe. Nigel says it wasn't just based on this week, but everything they've seen from them up to this point, but also this tidbit: "... and also who else is in the competition. We always try and cast it so we have all the genres of dance in the competition being represented when we can." Ummm, interesting. He tells Asuka that she is a little star of personality, but tells Paris that she didn't bring everything she could have, and that they have enough other contemporary dancers. So wow, Nigel just laid bare a little more of the behind-the-scenes action than I would have expected.
For the guys, Nigel says that he didn't think anyone did a very good solo. He tells Vitolio that they didn't see his personality in his routines, but they are giving him another chance. He tells Jonathan that he performed a little better last night and Tony that his solo was all locking and "not particularly good" locking at that. He drags it out a little, but Tony is going home. I'm OK with that!
What do you think of the results? It's always tough this early when people we didn't really get to know go home (e.g. Paris), but I don't feel quite the same about Tony because I'm not quite sure how he ended up in the Top 20 in the first place, so I felt like this was coming.