So You Think You Can Dance finale: Top 4 battle it out

Tonight is the performance finale of this season of So You Think You Can Dance, and it’s a finale of another sort as well. This week, we’re closing up shop at Reality Check. It’s been a crazy 5.5 years of Idol insanity, countless seasons of Survivor, local chefs making good on Top Chef, awesomely hilarious posts from guest bloggers, outraged comments from readers (and sometimes from contestants’ friends and family), lots of good conversation, and when you get right down to it, lots and lots of hours of me sitting in front of my laptop typing like a madwoman. It’s been a blast.

But I digress.

You know what else has been a ton of fun lately? This season of SYTYCD. I think the format tweak has worked really well -- last season with the all-stars put too much emphasis on said all-stars. Not introducing the all-stars until the Top 20 let us get to know more contestants and give them a shot -- and to start rooting for them long before the familiar faces returned. Well-played, show.

Back to tonight: Across two hours the final four will do solos, dance with all stars and perform with one another. Whew. Let’s get it started.

Joining Nigel Lythgoe and Mary Murphy on the judging panel are Katie Holmes and Kenny Ortega.

The first performance is a Doriana Sanchez disco featuring Melanie and Marko. It’s uber-fast and never stops from the first second to the last. I adore both of these dancers (they are for sure my personal top two), but they are both so strong technically, it feels like some of the frenzy of disco gets lost, just because they are so precise. It’s fun and entertaining, but not my favorite. Kenny calls it fun and electric. Katie calls them strong and beautiful and she loved the story they were telling. (There was a story?) Mary says she adores disco and Doriana, but she thought they had struggles with the lifts and that they went in and out of the style. OK, whew, it wasn’t just me. Nigel agrees with Mary on all counts. He thought they looked uncomfortable in the style. He hopes for better from them in the future routines.

Source: http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/realitycheck/blog/2011/08/so_you_think_you_can_dance_finale_top_4_battle_it_out.html

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