So You Think You Can Dance is back Wednesday, May 28 at 8:00 p.m./7:00 Central on Fox, and this year there are some old favorites and new innovation.

Hypable participated in a phone conference with series co-creator, executive producer and judge, Nigel Lythgoe. The one thing that was clear throughout, is that Lythgoe maintains a passion and commitment to the series. Even though he is connected to other reality shows like American Idol, he sees So You Think You Can Dance as a vehicle to keep arts and creativity alive, “I just love creativity. I don’t think we sort of concentrate enough in our education system on it, and anything that I can do to make people be creative and show their talents in that area, I think, that is how — not to go too deep in this, but I think that’s how culture in our country is going to sort of reestablish itself in the world with creativity. So anything I can do to expand on that I’m happy to do.”

Favorites will return

Season 11 will be filled with some familiar faces and familiar procedures. Returning judges include Adam Shankman, Christina Applegate, Jenna Dewan, Little Buck, and Wayne Brady among others. At the same time there will be new faces such as Billy Porter who won 2013 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his role as Lola in in the smash Broadway hit Kinky Boots. In Lythgoe’s opinion, judges strictly from the dance world have something of an easier time of it. It’s easier for them to be brutally honest as they are considered experts in their field. It’s harder to get a good celebrity judge with a dance background than you might think. Lythgoe stated that, “Once you start using professional performers and artists they’re never really going to be as honest as they want to be because they don’t want to lose fans. So you’ve got to be very careful how you do it.”

New partnerships with big-name talent

There are also some real surprises in season 11. For starters the show will be doing a featurette on different dance crews each week. They won’t be part of the main competition since it’s single-dancer focused, but their talents will be introduced each week by none other than Justin Bieber. Apparently, Bieber is quite the fan of the show, and scheduling was finally able to be worked so that he could do the intros. The show recently filmed the first round with Bieber in Cannes. Despite the singer’s current public images woes, Lythgoe seems very keen on working with him.

Previous format returns

There’s also a bit of what is old is now new. Instead of having America choose their favorite male and favorite female dancer, the show is returning to the original format. Only one favorite dancer will be chosen in the end. It won’t be broken down by sex. One thing that Lythgoe wants to make very clear in regards to the judges is that the American voting public is truly in charge, “What I don’t seem to get across to anybody is the audience is not voting anybody off the show. The person or the people that come down to the judges are the lowest three with the lowest votes, and then we are empowered basically to save two and send the other one home…they don’t know who the bottom person was so we could be sending the bottom person home for all they know, but there is this sort of real backlash sometimes from the viewers, who believe we are controlling the show.”

Future plans

As for Lythgoe’s larger plans and how So You Think You Can Dance might fit in, it’s really hard to separate the two. He’s always looking to support talented performers, “I’m going to part of the team that’s producing An American in Paris early next year. We’re opening in Paris in November/December, and hopefully the winner of So You Think You Can Dance will be offered a part in An American in Paris as well. So it all ties in at the end of the day doesn’t it?”