Pure World of Dance Season 1, Week 2 (Qualifiers) – Power Rankings

Ok, still a great show and I’m loving it, but I did notice the judges getting a bit more real with the contestants this week – I’m thinking last week’s episode was extra honeymoon-y to draw people in and get them hooked, and then they dropped the hammer (just a tiny bit!) this week.  Judges seemed a bit pickier, and we were shown a montage of acts that didn’t make it, rather than just the one from last week’s show. But I do appreciate that the judges are unusually constructive in their criticism – they aren’t out to make audience jaws drop at their cruelty, they don’t make rambling & vague complaints with no basis in reality, and they do seem to be genuinely trying to help the acts improve. Man, DWTS really has left me jaded, if the judges on another dance show managing basic human courtesy leaves me shocked & delighted 😛

As I mentioned last week, we’re still figuring this show out and how we want to blog it – so in light of that, I switched up how I’m doing the rankings from last week: since everyone is just trying to qualify at this phase in the competition (and nobody is really competing against each other yet, per se), I may as well just rank the performances in order of how well I thought they did (and their potential to stick around), from best to worst. Once we get to the face-off round (I think that’s what they called it…or is it the “battle” round? Idk…), then I’ll start comparing the acts to other acts in their division. And just as a reminder: if you want to see Heidi’s thoughts on last night’s episode, go here; music list from last night’s show can be found here.  And my thoughts on last week’s episode are here 🙂

1.) The Lab – Strongest act of the night, for me. I just couldn’t believe how CLEAN these kids were – there were no wishy-washy steps, or members forgetting choreography, and everyone was fully committing to their moves.  There are groups of adult dancers that can’t even do all of what I mentioned above – and these kids were SLAYING it. They had a great stage presence, too – the little girl giving stank face the whole time was, like Ne-Yo, “giving me life” the whole time 😛 I was also impressed at how well-rounded this young group seems to be – looks like some of the kids have at least some ballet/jazz training in addition to hip-hop, we have some gymnasts, and we have some cheerleaders as well. I think this group easily shot to the top of the junior division as the ones to beat last night – hope they can maintain the momentum!

2.) Fik-Shun – Admittedly, when Fik-Shun was on Live to Dance and So You Think You Can Dance, I thought he was charming and his dancing was pleasant, but I never really got why everyone thought he was so great.  He was just alright for me.  But now, I think he’s pulled a bit of an Allison Holker, and really matured in his dancing – and I LOVE it. When Allison was only 18 and did season 2 of SYTYCD, her dancing was decent, but it seemed to lack and depth and maturity – it was only after she had her daughter and returned with a lot more life experience that her dancing seem to take on a new depth and emotion, and that’s when she really came into her own.  I think Fik-Shun did exactly that last night – I don’t think I had ever seen him take on such a vulnerable piece before, and I think it actually made his dancing even better. I just loved the subtlety of what he was doing – the forward roll at the end with him fanning his fingers out just had me shook.  I absolutely loved it – and I have to wonder if this performance really resonated with Derek in particular, given that it was the exact same song and concept that he & Jules had for their Move Beyond number. I think Fik-Shun is going to be a force to be reckoned with in the Upper division – he’s definitely a threat to Keone & Mari, and likely some good competition for Les Twins as well.

3.) Luka & Jenalyn – Ok, first of all, I feel like I need to clarify something (and if you already saw me tweeting about this, you can tune out for a few sentences) – the style of ballroom that Luka & Jenalyn do, cabaret, is SUPPOSED TO BE ALMOST ENTIRELY LIFTS.  That’s something that I really wish they would have explained in their intro, because I saw a lot of complaints of “They did too many lifts!” or “That got repetitive, they should have done more real dancing!!!” And while within the context of most of the dances on DWTS, I would totally agree – in this instance, Luka & Jenalyn were doing exactly what their particular style of dance entails: mostly lifts with just a little bit of transitional dancing in between. It’s been YEARS since I’ve gotten to see the theater arts/cabaret performances at a ballroom competition (and there’s not a whole lot of couples that do it, because it is TOUGH), but if I recall, you can actually get docked for not having enough lifts, or having lifts that are too easy, or doing really poorly-executed lifts. I actually thought Luka & Jenalyn did a bang-up job with this routine – no struggling getting in and out of the lifts, and they transitioned effortlessly from one into another. I would probably advise keeping Luka’s dancing in between the lifts to a minimum, because while he’s a fantastic lifter, I could kinda see that he’s not really so much of a dancer – and really, most of the professional theater arts/cabaret men I can think of (Victor DaSilva, Eric Luna, Gregory Day & David Howland back in the day) really aren’t “dancers” so much as they are really, really good lifters.  Keep the focus on Jenalyn (and maybe work on her connection with Luka) and you’re gonna have a better time 🙂 The only problem I can foresee with these two once again is the style of dance – I think Derek “gets” it, because he’s familiar with it; but I’m not sure the quality and skill of what they were doing really resonated with J. Lo & Ne-Yo. Like a good portion of the audience, I think they just saw it as “a bunch of lifts”. Time will tell.

4.) Nick Daniels – Ok, brace yourselves, because I’m about to hit you with an unpopular opinion: I kinda got bored of Nick Daniels pretty quickly. I had to raise an eyebrow at the fact that they opted to end the show for the second week in a row with an angsty contemporary routine, and I hope that doesn’t mean that they’re already setting us up for a contemporary dancer to win the whole thing…cause that would be disappointing, this early on, given that I’m enjoying that it’s still anyone’s game at this point. And those that follow me over at PureDWTS, know that I’m not a huge fan of contemporary, because I think it’s prone to relying too heavily on displays of flexibility, gymnastics, and general “flailing” rather than actual dancing – and I unfortunately found that Nick’s routine was kind of an example of that very type of contemporary that I really don’t care for. Sure, he’s very flexible and has great extension, and he can flip and do aerials, and he has great height on his jumps – but really wish he had more actual dance content. I will say that his dancing was more mature than Diana’s last week, though, so that made it bit more tolerable for me. Oddly enough, I actually found Nick himself to be kinda wooden when he was just talk to the judges or camera – so the raw emotion of his dance kinda hit me from outta nowhere. I’m hoping we get dances from him with just a bit more content (and a bit more creative than the standard flailing contemporary we’ve seen so far), because I think he’s going to be around for awhile.

5.) Quickstyle – One quick note before I actually get into critiquing them: I was kind of shocked to hear that dancing for men is still a bit of a taboo notion in Norway.  I guess I just always hear people talking about much more “tolerant” and “progressive” Scandinavian countries are than the U.S., so I guess I assumed their attitude towards men dancing would be more…accepting. Very strange. Anywho, I actually really dug that they picked such an unexpected song to dance to – “Jolene” was a risky choice, but once they started dancing and I saw how they interpreted the music, it was like “Ok, y’know what? This is actually a perfect song for this.” Their musicality was a revelation – they were really hitting all these interesting, nuanced accents in the music, to the point where I actually felt like I was hearing parts of the song I hadn’t even noticed before.  It was a cool, different kind of performance – and that’s my only concern for them moving forward on this show: they almost seem to “cool” and in control that I think it could come across as low-energy or less memorable, when you look at high-energy, attention-grabbing groups like Super Cr3w. I’m hoping they come up with something a bit more hard-hitting and impactful for the next round.

6.) Miami All-Stars – Guys, I LOVED the All-Stars when they were on America’s Got Talent a few years ago, so you can imagine my disappointment at how…not great they were last night. To be fair to them, here’s a bit of background which I think might explain why they weren’t quite as impressive: based on this Instagram post from one of the All-Stars from back in September, I get the impression this group basically reunited after a multi-year hiatus just to try out for World of Dance. And given how one of the members mentioned on the show that they all had day jobs, I think it’s safe to say that this group is already at a bit of a disadvantage in that they haven’t been rehearsing together daily for years, like some of the others. On top of that, I was a tad surprised to not see Manny in the mix – he was the leader of the MAS when they were on AGT, and I think he did most of their choreo, too…did he maybe hand the reigns off to someone else so he could focus more on D’Angelo & Amanda? Who knows, but his choreo seemed to work quite well on AGT – which brings me to another point: I don’t know that what the MAS does is well-suited to this stage.  And I mean the literal stage – it’s smaller and round, as opposed to the long, rectangular stage of AGT.  The MAS were able to spread out and really do some cool formations on that stage, but they seem woefully limited on this one – like they aren’t sure how to do the same impressive stuff in a much smaller space, so they have to throttle it down.  I would argue that the stage can’t really accommodate all of them and the cool stuff they can do – they were doing much more impressive formations, lifts, and acrobatics on AGT. So I guess their problem is two-fold: they need to figure out how to adapt their style to this stage, and I think they just need more practice to tighten anything up.  I’m wondering if they got put through for the sake of variety, because there just isn’t another salsa/Latin group in the team division – because honestly, as much as I loved them on AGT, what they did last night was just not up-to-snuff. I’m hoping they can step up their game for the next round, because of all the acts last night, they’re probably on-the-bubble for the next round.

Eliminated acts (Kaeli & Brandon, Fuze, JJ & Joey): Like NXT LVL last week, I don’t feel like any of the eliminated acts were bad, per se – they all just seemed to be lacking in a particular area that would make it very hard for them to remain competitive this season.  Granted, we only got to see short clips of each of these acts, but from what I can tell, Kaeli & Brandon seemed to lack cohesion & connection in their choreography; Fuze’s choreography was just a bit too simple; and JJ & Joey were just very young, and while they had a lot of skill, they just didn’t seem to know how to piece it together effectively into a full routine. I think they could all return next season (if it’s allowed) with stronger material and probably make it through – because I don’t think they suffered as much from skill issues as they did choreographic ones.

So what did you guys think of last night’s show? Who’s your favorite so far? And who do you seem emerging as potential front-runners for the three divisions?