So You Think You Can Dance Finally Allowing Male Dancers to Touch Each Other

I love So You Think You Can Dance, but its hetero lockstep grows increasingly tiresome; the dancers always paired off boy-girl, going through styles whiplash-fast while the storyline stays static, with the girl nearly always playing the vamp or the ingenue, the boy her lovelorn or aggressive pursuer. The resulting hazy mush of turgid and overwrought negligee-in-the-moonlight couple dances is the major thing holding So You Think You Can Dance back from its True Self, which is legitimately artistic and even experimental, and surely apprised of human emotion outside the syrupy realm of “straight, lovelorn.”

Thus do I find myself sitting in front of the show yelling “Now kiss” at these lithe young men: a dance show that totally elides gayness is not appropriate by me. Last season, I was glad when choreographer Travis Wall put out this very sensual dance, which is about “brothers,” and on last night’s episode, he choreographed the above incredible routine, which has the boys lifting each other, throwing each other around, and it’s delicate and strong and suggestive of the vast reserves of narrative potential this show largely leaves untapped. (Also, the move at :35, my god.)

After the jump, another gorgeous routine from last night featuring more syntactical rearrangement: the boys lift each other and the girls even lift the boys!