Dance War - more like Dance Pillow-Fight

Swan Lake Samba Girl posted her review of Dance War: Bruno vs Carrie Ann last night, and I have to say I was just as disappointed as she was. What a mess.

First off: The dancing. It seems that what it took on this show to be a "good dancer" was to be a good gymnast. They were really going crazy for tumbling passes. Oh, and fouette turns. Yes, they're nice and all, but it seemed like every second person they showed was doing them... and not really to the music or anything - just doing them. I will just say this point blank: If you are dancing to music, but your movement ignores the music - then go home and work on your musicality. It does not matter how perfect your technique is if you can't figure out how to fit that movement to your music. And don't even try to say, "that's the choreographer's job" Sure it is, but it's your job too.

The singing: I don't know a whole lot about singing technique and stuff, but I know bad singing. I am a desperately bad singer. I even took a singing class once - and well, I learned a very important thing: I *really* can't sing. And in the case of these auditions, I could pick out my own kind in a heartbeat. Bruno and Carrie Ann seemed to be really enamored of singers with a really broad vibrato, regardless of whether they could carry a tune in a bucket. They will probably be fine singing pop songs to loud backing music, but don't mistake them for really good singers.

I hope that maybe once they get the finalists together, and start doing some rigorous coaching and rehearsal that maybe some of them will pull themselves together and start to really shine.

While I'm talking about the show, though. I'm really baffled as to why they made this audition episode 2 hours long. They did not have two hours of content. Not when they had to haul out Drew Lachey in a wig, and do a whole thing about the weather. At the beginning of the show they had just a momentary clip of a group of 4 Hawaiian dancers (at least I think they were Hawaiian dancers, it was just a couple seconds and a wide angle shot, so it was hard to be absolutely certain) Why not show their dance for a minute or two? It would be a nice break from handspring-handspring-fouette-backflip for 2 hours straight. And it would be a much better use of their time than "Oh look! It's raining in Los Angeles! whatever shall we do?!?!"

I might watch another episode or two, but only because the writers are on strike and I like to have the TV on while I'm knitting. If this doesn't improve, I'm going back to re-runs of Intervention on A&E for Monday nights.