Greetings!
So You Think You Can Dance Canada has just started and it's looking very interesting. Tonight the top 20 were named....
* Emmanuel Sandhu, who trained for many years with NBoC before going on to be Canada's top ranked male figure skater, did not make the top twenty. A bit of a surprise, and I suspect that it was less the stated excuse of poor transitions and more a problem with his attitude. He has oodles of talent, but was known for his lack of consistency in competition and it seems to be a known thing in the skating world that is not the most dedicated in practices and is not short of ego.
* But, we have at least one ballet dancer - a young lady who actually auditioned and did her solos en pointe, but was able to pick up the other styles very well. She came from one of the do it all ballet/tap/lyrical/modern schools, so I don't think she was specialised early enough to have had a real chance for a professional career. Yet, it's great to see ballet represented. (Apparently one of the producers or directors is heavily involved with NBoC, and Rex Harrington (former NBoC principal) was a guest judge in the early rounds. I wonder if we might get a guest performance from NBoC during the competition...)
As a whole, the top 20 seem to be VERY talented and much more diverse than in the US. The majority seem to be from ballet/ballroom/contemporary/hazz backgrounds rather than hip-hop or crumping/popping - a nice change from previous US version. And, frankly, even though Canada has a much smaller population than the US, the level of the dancing seems of a much higher quality here.
The bios for the top 20 haven't been posted yet, but I'll fill in more details when they are available. Non-Canadians should be able to access the website at
www.ctv.ca, but probably won't be able to watch the videos.