5, 6, 7, 8 Ways 'So You Think You Can Dance' Is All About Art, Man

Chances are, if your circle of friends contains even a few avid summer-TV watchers, you've been encouraged to watch So You Think You Can Dance. The American Idol-style dance competition has been steadily growing in popularity over the last four summers — so much so that it's making a leap to Fox's fall schedule in September — and its fans tend to be proselytizers.

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The easiest way to win a Dance convert (says the zealot) is to describe it as "'American Idol, but better." Lots of people watch Idol but do so while holding their noses: it's cheesy, it's corporate, it's soulless, it's amateur hour, and the judges have no earthly idea what they're talking about.

And that's coming from yours truly, who actually likes the show.

A Dance fan will offer no such caveats; ask them why they watch the show, and even the most hardened, cynical ironists will end up using words like "beauty," "technique," and "artistic" within three sentences.

So with the fifth season about to kick into high gear with tonight's first competition episode, you may be asking what is it about this glitzy, commercial show that gets TV fans discussing "artistry" in the middle of June? Count off with me while I offer eight reasons:

1. The threshold of success is much lower. That doesn't mean expectations aren't high — quite the opposite, particularly if contemporary choreographer/frequent judge Mia Michaels has any say about it. But the winner of So You Think You Can Dance receives the title of America's Favorite Dancer, a cash prize, and...not much else.

No contract with 19 Entertainment. No Kelly Clarkson-sized profitability expectations. America isn't really in the business of crowning superstar dancers. They might actually become very successful — a role in Step Up 3D, a Christina Aguilera music video, a Broadway show — but because that success comes without a media spotlight, the judgery gets to be less preoccupied with marketability and focus on the dancing.

The rest of the list and some illustrative clips, after the jump...

 

2. Choreography is king. Each week, the contestants are randomly assigned a genre of dance — from the Argentine tango to Bollywood, Hip-Hop to Contemporary — and a skilled choreographer to craft a routine for them. So right off the bat, you've got two levels of artistry: how creative the routine's going to be, and how skillfully it will be danced. On Idol, the performance of the house band often has an impact on the performances, but it's rarely acknowledged and certainly never presented as the collaborative effort it is here. This Wade Robson-choreographed jazz routine from Season 3 shows a bit of the process.

3. The genre differences are for real Unlike Idol, where you can get away with muscling a Country Night Willie Nelson tune to your own preferred style, the dancers need to stretch themselves to fit whatever genre they're thrown. Contemporary dancers need to hit their hip-hop routines hard, ballroom experts must adapt to Broadway — there are no shortcuts. Just do the work. For the viewer, it's incredibly rewarding. Watching a pop-n-locker like Season 4's Twitch glide across the stage with a Viennese waltz is equal to a season's worth of "making it your own." Check out this clip:

And then this one:

4. The judges are experts. Look, there's no need to pile on Randy Jackson and Kara DioGuardi more than has already been done. But consider the fact that even Mary Murphy, the banshee-screaming Paula of the table, is a crack ballroom choreographer. Say what you will about the sexual politics of masculinity-obsessed producer/judge Nigel Lythgoe (and I'll say plenty), he's got a lifetime working in dance under his belt.

And the rotating cast of choreographer third judges — Mia Michaels, Adam Shankman, Debbie Allen, the delightfully verbose Lil' C — manage cogent criticisms and well-informed praise. (Of course, this being dance, the concentration of verbose flibbertygibbetry is equally high, but on this show it comes across as charming rather than symptomatic of a substance abuse problem.)

5. They embrace the cheese As opposed to, say, Idol's Disco Night — or, God forbid, Andrew Lloyd Webber Night — where the performers are mostly looking to emerge with their dignity intact, Dance jumps into disco or Broadway headlong. Of course, it's kind of unfair to slam Idol for this. They're searching for current, radio-friendly, marketable artists. A reasonable sense of "cool" is necessary.

Thankfully, "cool" doesn't seem to be an issue on Dance. At least not in the traditional sense. Give them makeup, props, bizarre characters, or costumes drowning in sequins, and they will sell the whole thing without so much as a downward glance. They've collectively shed their vestigial gene for shame — and thank God for that.

6. They embrace the niche. The comparatively smaller audience for Dance — and likely one less mainstream than the Idol viewership — means less pandering on the show's part.

"Less," of course, not "none." This year's Vegas auditions featured tears and grandparents, and the show's repeated insistence on strict gender roles can be depressingly conservative, but by and large, Dance doesn't end up with Sanjaya-like sympathy cases making the Top 10.

7. Cat Deeley > Ryan Seacrest x 1 million. What do you want? It's math. Can't argue with math. Give or take a Tom Bergeron or a Phil Keoghan, Cat Deeley is the best reality show host on TV. Part cheerleader, part co-conspirator, no one gets more joy out of her show's contestants than Cat.

8. When Lady Gaga shows up, it makes sense. Last season, a good seven months before she unzippered her eyeball and showed the Idol audience what audacious looks like (it looks like a clear-plastic piano filled with pink bubbles, as it turns out), Lady Gaga freaked America out on Dance. One key thematic difference, though: She can't really sing, so her appearance on a singing show was more than a little dubious. She does, however, command quite the fleet of dancers. Making her Dance performance a spectacle with some substance.

Which is actually a good way to think of "Dance" as a whole.