Randy Jackson on ABDC Season 2

Randy Jackson Presents: America's Best Dance Crew season 2 begins with a casting special on MTV Saturday at 2pm.


_{Courtesy of America's Best Dance Crew}

SYTYCD News Roundup

Paula Abdul, Randy Jackson, and...Tyce Diorio??? Look close and you'll see them all in Paula's latest music video, “Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow”. Oh yeah, some guy named Simon shows up too.




Watch for season 2 finalist Jaymz Tuaileva in US commercials for Dulce de Leche Jello and Orbit Gum.




Our friend Carissa has videos comparing Pasha & Lauren's Shane Sparks-choreographed Transformers routine, and a recent Transformers routine from PBS's America's Ballroom Challenge. Plagiarism, or artistic homage?

LINK



Mary Murphy referred to season 3 finalist Jimmy Arguello in a recent interview. He didn't get a chance to develop much of a fan base, but watch his I Can Only Imagine solo and tell me he isn't a serious talent.

America's Best Dance Crew Media

Randy Jackson recently appeared on Letterman and Conan, primarily hyping American Idol but also mentioning America's Best Dance Crew. Apparently, talk show hosts have trouble grasping the concept of dance crews.


Skip ahead to about the 60 minute mark at this Blogtalk radio show to hear an interview with ABDC judge Shane Sparks. He confirms he's not returning to SYTYCD for season 4, but doesn't rule out the possibility of coming back in future seasons.


JC Chasez talks about judging on the show. He's been taking some heat around the web, but I find his critiques to be fair and constructive.



The talented and original Iconic Crew are profiled in this News Transcript article:

When asked how they came up with the idea for Broadway combined with hiphop, Hubela said he and his sister, Beth, came up with the idea for the first recital at Icon. They had a friend create a modern day remix of the song "One" from "A Chorus Line" with a hip-hop beat and it blew them away. They chose to base their performance for America's Best Dance Crew on that concept because they wanted something that would make them stand out.

"Even though it gave us a label as a Broadway crew, it's OK because that's [part of] what we do," he said.

As good as they are, it's doubtful the first winner of the first hiphop dance show will be anything but pure hiphop.

SYTYCD News Roundup

Cat Deeley will host Lifetime's The Big Match, some sort of dating/reality/game show.

SOURCE



Shimmy Online interviews Benji Schwimmer.

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Here's an early review of Step Up 2 The Streets, which includes the choreography of Dave Scott. The good news is: there's plenty of dancing.

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This sounds like overkill to me, but what do I know? A year-long celebration of the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson's Thriller includes:

"Thrillercast," a groundbreaking 40-episode podcast event, launches on February 12th and will be updated weekly throughout 2008. The series features icons of music, screen and culture including hip-hop legend Darryl "DMC" McDaniels, superstars Nick Cannon and Chris Brown, choreographers Shane Sparks and Mia Michaels from the hit show "So You Think You Can Dance," and dozens of other special guests. Each episode takes us behind the scenes into their lives to explore their own personal experiences with Thriller and its influence on them, both personally and professionally. "Thrillercast" will be available for free through iTunes, Zune, and all major podcast providers, as well as directly through www.michaeljackson.com.

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Blogger Daneolicious danced as an extra in the filming of American Mall, the MTV film featuring our own Neil Haskell.

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Our friend Yessy Gomez is sponsoring the "Just Showin' Off" Showcase, an event in Grand Rapids, Mi. to benefit "dancers in attending the auditions for "So you think you can dance" because they are not coming to Chicago this year!" It's Sunday at 6:30 at the Spectrum Theater.

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The Canadian Press interviews Randy Jackson about America's Best Dance Crew, which premieres tomorrow night on MTV. He talks a bit about dance from a musician's perspective:

"Listen, I've been doing music my whole life and every up-tempo song I've ever made, you often wonder how people are going to dance to it," the 46-year-old musician told The Associated Press.

"You go to clubs, you try and find out how they're moving to it. Is the beat fast enough? Dance is like the right hand of music. There couldn't be any dance without music, right? And vice versa," he said at a studio off Sunset Boulevard where the show was taping recent auditions.

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SYTYCD News Roundup

Randy Jackson Presents America's Best Dance Crew aired it's 2 hour live casting special yesterday. Our friends Jamal Weaver and Ernest "E-Knock" Phillips, with their Status Quo Crew, were the first
group named to the top 8.

The Cincinnati Enquirer says Shane Sparks will not be returning to SYTYCD for the upcoming season.

SOURCE



The Energy Between Us, the piece Wade Robson choreographed for the San Francisco Ballet's 75th Anniversary celebration, is receiving mixed reviews.

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Our Australian correspondent, Reality Raver, reports that Network TEN has unveiled the official website for So You Think You Can Dance Australia.

LINK

Hok And The Quest Crew

There's word around the web that we may see Hok Konishi and Quest on Randy Jackson Presents America's Best Dance Crew this Saturday on MTV (2pm ET). Here they are performing at Grinnell College.



Scene-Guy recently interviewed Hok:

You’ve said before that you’re “obsessed with beauty,” and we saw some of your artwork and saw you playing violin on the show. I’m wondering, was there any dance numbers this season that stood out to you as particularly beautiful?

A contemporary piece done by Lacey and Neil by Mia Michaels. That was just amazing. I don’t know the words to describe the piece, it was just… they created a whole new world. I actually feel from the bottom of my heart that when you see something so beautiful, it’s like nothing else in the world matters. And it really seemed like time didn’t matter. When you’re in the moment, you don’t have to think about time going on. It was a really amazing thing to actually see that.

A lot of people think the same thing about your own number, the Hummingbird and the Flower by Wade. When you were going through the rehearsals for that, did you know that dance was going to have as much of an impact as it did?

Definitely that piece was really different. Not just the depth of the music, but we had to go in depth on what the piece was really about, and how it feels inside. I think during the rehearsals I didn’t know what it would turn out like, just because I’d never done anything like that before. When I watched it on TV back in the apartment it was really weird because I love that piece and I felt it was beautiful – but the person dancing on TV was me. It didn’t actually connect when I first watched it. It was amazing.

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America's Best Dance Crew

Here's the press release for MTV's upcoming Randy Jackson Presents: America's Best Dance Crew. My hope for this show is that we see some quality choreography.

UPDATE: Click here for updated coverage of the show.

MTV BRINGS THE STREET TO THE STAGE WITH PREMIERE OF "RANDY JACKSON PRESENTS: AMERICA'S BEST DANCE CREW" THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 7 AT 10:00 P.M. ET/PT

Live Casting Showdown on Saturday, January 26 at 2 p.m. ET/PT To Reveal Top Eight Dance Crews To Compete Weekly

Mario Lopez to Host, JC Chasez and Shane Sparks to Judge and America to Decide

Santa Monica, CA MTV rocks the floor with the new competitive group dance series "Randy Jackson Presents: America's Best Dance Crew" beginning Thursday, February 7 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT. Mario Lopez ("Dancing with the Stars") will host the exhilarating weekly series, and giving their feedback each week to the dance crews will be judges JC Chasez (N*Sync) and choreographer Shane Sparks ("You Got Served"). With exclusive content on-air, online, on demand and on mobile, viewers will have the opportunity to learn more about the individual dancers in each crew and how to copy some of their intricate moves.

Following a nationwide search in Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, MTV and executive producer Randy Jackson welcome 12 of the very best dance crews to the stage during a LIVE two-hour casting event on Saturday, January 26 at 2:00 p.m. ET/tape delayed PT. However, with dreams on the line, crews need to impress the panel of judges, as only the elite eight will move on to compete each week.

CLICK TO CONTINUE READING

"Randy Jackson Presents: America's Best Dance Crew" promises to be one of the most visual and inspiring performance competition shows to ever hit television. It is the first dance competition series for dance crews rather than individual dancers. The top hip-hop crews from around the country will battle it out on the stage floor for dance supremacy, a cash prize and touring contract.

Shot on location in Los Angeles, each dance crew of five to seven members will rehearse and demonstrate their most innovative choreography and skills as their intimate life stories and personal drama unfold within the show. Every performance themed episode will tap into the crews' emotion, spirit and inspiration from recreating dance music videos seen recently on MTV, to using dance to tell the story of a favorite feature film, to paying homage to the classic grooves of the past.

Viewers from around the country will vote for their favorite crews via text messaging, phone and online (http://dancecrew.mtv.com). The two weakest teams as determined by voting will enter the battle zone to show their best moves for the judges and the chance to advance to the next round. One crew will be eliminated each week, ultimately revealing the nation's best dance crew.

Cranking up the funk, MTV.com gives viewers an inside look into "Randy Jackson Presents: America's Best Dance Crew" with photos and bios on all the crews, judges and hosts at http://dancecrew.mtv.com. Plus, step-by-step instructions will be posted so that one can learn the dance moves seen performed by the crews. After the episode premieres on-air, the voting polls will immediately open online for people to show their support for their favorite crew. In addition, viewers can discuss on the official Dance Crew blog what they thought about the performances and the crews and whether or not the weakest team did indeed deserve to leave. MTV.com also will offer full episodes online to view.

Verizon FiOS TV will be the only MTV On Demand provider to make the series available to its subscribers after the episode premieres on-air. Additionally, beginning January 24 for two weeks, Verizon FiOS TV will offer bonus dance instructional video segments as well as features on dance trends hosted by MTV News correspondent and hip-hop icon Sway.

Partnering with various distributors, MTV Mobile will make available dance instructional segments, audition highlights and full episodes, after they air on linear. Cast bios and episode guides may be viewed at http://wap.mtv.com.

"Randy Jackson Presents: America's Best Dance Crew" is executive produced by "American Idol" judge Randy Jackson, Rob Lee (Bayonne Entertainment), Hip Hop International's Howard Schwartz and Karen Schwartz (the creators of the USA & World Hip Hop Dance Championships), Harriet Sternberg (Dream Merchant 21) and Joel Gallen (Tenth Planet Productions). David Auerbach and Brooke Karzen are the executives overseeing the project for Warner Horizon Television ("The Bachelor;" "The Search For The Next Pussycat Doll"). Drew Tappon and Lauren Dolgen are the executives overseeing the project for MTV.

MTV Networks, a unit of Viacom (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B), is one of the world's leading creators of programming and content across all media platforms. MTV Networks, with more than 100 channels worldwide, owns and operates the following television programming servicesMTV: MUSIC TELEVISION, MTV2, VH1, mtvU, NICKELODEON, NICK at NITE, COMEDY CENTRAL, TV LAND, SPIKE TV, CMT, NOGGIN, VH1 CLASSIC, LOGO, MTVN INTERNATIONAL and THE DIGITAL SUITE FROM MTV NETWORKDS, a package of 13 digital services, all of these networks trademarks of MTV Networks. MTV Networks connects with its audiences through its robust consumer products businesses and its more than 95 properties worldwide, including online, broadband, wireless and interactive television services and also has licensing agreements, joint ventures, and syndication deals whereby all of its programming services can be seen worldwide.

SYTYCD News Roundup

TravisWall-Online has a 3 part interview with Travis.

LINK to part 1
LINK to part 2
LINK to part 3



Ashlee Nino blogs about her experience performing in Times Square on New Years Eve.

...after receiving our credentials we headed through the mob of "anxious ball dropping watchers" and arrived safely in our dressing room at the ABC building. We were kind of rushed through a taped rehearsal on the roof top of the building....I think that's when it finally hit me....omg I'm in New York for the first time and I'm performing in front of millions on a roof top in Times Square. I'm so lucky! The rehearsal didn't go so well... Neither Christina or I were wearing the correct wardrobe...I still had my tacky credentials hanging from my neck and the stage was so small, we had to rechoreograph a lot of the routine in about 3 minutes (literally). We were both praying that none of this taped rehearsal would be aired!
Luckily it wasn't! At 10pm we headed back to the roof top and performed live....it was a hit!
Right after we stepped off stage we were released to go about our own business and enjoy the few hours left in 2007. Some of the band headed back to the hotel, others to different parties but Christina and I decided to stay in times square (I mean c'mon I had to watch the ball drop too!)

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Jesús Solorio is looking for dancers for the music video for his song Beautiful Dancer.

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Shane Sparks hypes the live dance classes available at DigitalDancers.com.




Shane will be one of the judges on MTV's Randy Jackson Presents America’s Best Dance Crew, which will air a special casting episode on Jan. 26 at 2PM ET.

SOURCE



Want to watch a reality show about Nigel Lythgoe and fellow Idol/SYTYCD producer Ken Warwick's experiences buying and operating a vineyard? No, I didn't think so, but having worked in the wine industry, I found Corkscrewed: The Wrath of Grapes fascinating. There are also plenty of juicy behind-the-scenes insights into the Idol machine, like when Nigel sees a horse at a vineyard and says to Warwick "Did you see that long face? It looks like Cowell when he isn't recognized in a restaurant". Warwick points to Nigel and says "Or him".

LINK to all episodes.



PopRepublic.TV has an interview with the 3 So You Think You Can Dance Australia judges: Matt Lee, Bonnie Lythgoe, and Jason Coleman. It starts on page 13 of the magazine.

LINK directly to PDF.

Yet Another Dance Show In The Works

American Idol's Randy Jackson has received the go-ahead from MTV to begin production on "Randy Jackson Presents America's Best Dance Crew".

Basic premise of the show -- a sort of hip-hop "So You Think You Can Dance?" -- remains: Dance "crews" of five to seven members come to Los Angeles to compete against each other. Viewers will pick the ultimate winner, with live performance shows sending home one team each week.

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This joins Bravo's Step It Up and ABC's Dance Wars: Carrie Anne vs Bruno as new productions of dance reality programming here in the US. If the TV writers strike drags on, chances are we'll see more.