Reality Ravings

A fresh look is given into the world of So You Think You Can Dance in a comprehensive, and insightful article in today's Sydney Morning Herald article by Gabriel Wilder.

Vanessa Sew Hoy must be doing multiple pirouettes after seeing the beautiful photo on the cover of Spectrum today, as the other dancers are feverishly counting number of pictures and quotes.

However it was refreshing to see that backstage amongst the dancers was "relaxed and easygoing", which was not the impression I have been given from exit articles by previous contestants.

Even as a huge fan of reality TV I did get smile when I saw this quote from the 'head' judge Jason Coleman, who I do normally agree with.

"[I think] after nine years of reality television, people are latching onto the honesty of it and the integrity of it," says Jason Coleman, one of the show's three judges. "There's not a lot of manipulation going on, there's not a lot of squeezing of them and getting them to cry, we don't need to do that.

I must admit the So You Think You Can Dance format is harder to manipulate then others eg Big Brother, and The Biggest Loser but there is still manipulation occurring. An example is the editing of the judges comments as highlighted this post. Some of Jason Coleman's comments on the Henry and Rhiannion routine had been edited to give a more positive spin on their dancing.

But he does some up the whole show succinctly when he says:

"It's entertainment. It's a combination of great dancing, great costumes, great choreography, great lighting. These pieces are only a minute-and-a-half long. And that's a very easy stimulus for all demographics to watch."

I like that Jason Coleman also touches on the Meryl Tankard controversy, and agree wholeheartedly when he says "The fact that this show is taking contemporary dance to the people, it's better for Meryl. It's going to put more people into her theatre".

This reiterates what this blogs readers had to say about Meryl Tankard's comments in this post Meryl Tankard implies dance should not be for the masses.

I particularly liked that the article had a snapshot of the different styles of dancing and where you could learn them and that more people are going to dance classes because of the show.

Link to SMH article here.

Disclaimer: Reality Raver was quoted in this article so will not be negative about anything feeding her blog traffic!