The final week of auditions for season 11 showed us the finest the Dirty South had to offer, as we got our last first look at some of the faces we’ll see in the top 20.
This week’s entire two-hour episode was dedicated to Atlanta, and the city sure had a lot to offer us. From their own style of hip-hop, to a number of returning contestants, Atlanta is most definitely not messing around this year. Street-dancing legend Lil’ Buck and dancer/actress Jenna Dewan-Tatum joined the judges panel to lend their expertise to the auditioning contestants.
Early Standouts
Mariah Reives
18-year-old Mariah Reives kicked off an exciting night of Atlanta auditions with a great jazz audition. Her performance was equal parts technically beautiful and adorably likable. The performance was full of such adorable sass, you couldn’t help but smile. The judges gave her a standing ovation for her work, and gave her a ticket straight through to the next round.
Ricky Ubeda
We’ve already discussed Ricky Ubeda when we got a sneak peek at his audition, but can we please talk about him again? Because he’s great. First of all, he is absolutely adorable. His sweet silliness is reminiscent of Mark Kanemura (before he became a hot muscle-y Gaga dancer), and his dancing is on point. Nigel seems to already think that Ricky will be going far in the competition, which is certainly a good opinion to have. And it cannot be said enough, if Ricky makes it to the top 20, and there are no audience members cheering him on with a “Ubeda believe it!” sign, then let’s just call this whole thing off.
Marissa Milele
Princess warrior Marissa Milele is another return auditioner, having made it all the way to the green mile last year. Just as much of a gymnast as a dancer, she pulls out lots of tricks for her routine. She is an incredibly strong woman, and her strength is evident in her powerful routine, full of flips and turns. Nigel called her a vicious beast, Jenna said that it’s “fun to see women that are strong like that,” and all the judges gave her a ticket straight through to the next round.
Elaine Kimball
Elaine Kimball has dealt with a lot of obstacles to get to where she is now. Her mom, a former performer herself, encouraged Elaine in her dancing, but unfortunately suffered a stroke at the age of 43, when Elaine was young, which left her partially paralyzed and mentally handicapped. Elaine’s dance to John Legend’s “All of Me,” which she dedicated to her mother, was beautiful, but the judges all felt she could have dug deeper and created more of an emotional connection. They put her through to choreography, where she passed with flying colors.
Angelina Granitz
Angelina Granitz may be a little bit left of center, personality-wise, but she gets along great with her older brother, who inspired her to start dancing. Though she was incredibly nervous prior to her audition, once she started dancing, she seemed to come alive onstage. She captured everyone’s attention in moment one, and never let it go for her entire performance. Her control was excellent, but Nigel felt she needed to be doing more actual dancing. Still, that didn’t stop him from giving her a ticket to the next round.
Christina Moya-Palacios
Christina Moya-Palacio has spent much of her dancing career putting together routines in hospital waiting rooms, as her brother has had over 20 surgeries in the last 10 years, due to various conditions. Her brother is doing well now, as is Christina, whose compelling routine was absolutely gorgeous, and had the judges basically throwing tickets at her as soon as she finished.
Dance Crews
Well, Bieber and buddy are back, still struggling for relevancy. After revealing that last week’s winning crew was Wanted A-Shieks, they introduced us to the final two crews, Jungle Boogie and Control Freakz. Appropriately, Jungle Boogie is a cranking crew from Atlanta, proud to be representing their hometown. The Control Freakz are a popping crew, specializing in popping as a controlled dance, in a way no other dancers are doing it. They feel the competition won’t be able to handle them, but only time will tell if the Jungle Boogie crew is up to the challenge. At the end of the show, they were neck-and-neck in Twitter votes.
Next week’s So You Think You Can Dance kicks the drama up a notch with the California callbacks! The callbacks have taken place in Vegas in the past, but moving them to a more chilled-out setting has not lessened the drama one bit. 150 dancers from around the nation will converge on the Left Coast to fight for a shot in the top 20, amid injuries, bad tempers, unprofessional behavior, and undoubtedly many, many tears. And getting right to the good stuff, season 11’s top 20 will be revealed at the end of the episode!
The callback rounds of So You Think You Can Dance air next Wednesday at 8 p.m. on Fox.
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