Time for our weekly Dance! Show! update!

This week’s rising stars include Jakob and Ashleigh — loved, loved, loved their Choreographer Mandy Moore routine, it’s right up there with the famous table routine for me. Jakob in particular I thought was amazing — I loved his hunched shoulders and amazing leaps. He’s really growing on me.

Also on the upswing: Noelle and Russell, who were great this week. Although, it’s so easy to be great when you’ve got SEAN CHEESEMAN as your choreographer. Sean! I love you! Call me!

Actually I’m kind of divided about Sean’s recruitment to the American show. It’s just like when you have a small, alternative band and you go see them in secret clubs with your friends and lament about what geniuses they are and how they should totally be famous, and then they finally get a big record deal and get a song on the Billboard Hot 100 and then you spend all your time lamenting about how much cooler they were before they sold out to the man. You know? I just hope America doesn’t change you, Sean!

And I just remembered, they also stole Canadian Gustavo Vargas. I love him too. I hope he gets better dancers this week than Mollee and Nathan, who were SO AWFUL I just could not believe it. As expected, however, their cuteness and general popularity meant people voted for them anyway, and actually, they probably got a ton of extra votes just because the judges singled them out as being the worst. People afraid of their elimination were motivated to rush to the phone. Don’t do that, jidges!

On the wane this week: Karen and Kevin. I loved their hustle, I thought they were both outstanding, and in general they are two of my favourites. I hope the fact that they landed in the bottom two has more to do with the fact that they pulled first draw, than that America is stupid. I predict the show will give them the coveted pimp spot (i.e. going last) this week to encourage America to re-think its position.

Also down: Ellenore and Ryan, who were just SO very terrible. They absolutely deserved bottom three. Pauline and Pee-tah were also pretty bad — they’re both adorable and charming, but I thought they did deserve to go home.

In the meh category: Legacy and Kathryn, still two of my favourites but the Broadway style is so impossibly hard to succeed at; and Channing and Victor, who were performing in their own style and still made me yawn. I predict bottom three for Channing and Victor next week, unless Victor has some crazy teen girl following I don’t know about.

So far this season, I feel like the show is struggling to find a niche. The dancing has been okay, with a couple great numbers, but there are so many new choreographers and the new set is so terrible that I have yet to be really wowed. I miss the guest judges, too, I hope they start adding a few to the panel some weeks for new perspectives. A lot of the dancers this year are very, very young — I think almost half of them are only 18, the bare minimum age to be on the show — and I think it shows in the quality and maturity of their dancing.

Not that it’ll stop me from watching or anything. Dance! Show! Rocks!