SYTYCD: The top 20 (oh, wait, the top 19)

Tuesday night's episode of So You Think You Can Dance was the first competition episode of the season. And due to the baseball playoffs, there was no voting. Instead the judges picked the weakest four dancers who then danced for their life before one guy and one girl was sent home. But before I get to all that, below is a recap of the dances as well as some SYTYCD news.

It is official that Billy Bell is out of the competition and Noelle, who is injured, sat in the audience cheering the dancers on. The choreographer filled in for Noelle and, as said in previous posts, she has one week to recover or she will have to leave the competition permanently. Also during the episode, Nigel again mentioned how Paula Abdul has an open invitation to judge/dance/choreograph for the show. Another point: now that Adam is a permanent judge, does that mean there won't be a rotating judge each week? I thought Adam was going to be in addition to the usual three judges. As much as I love Adam, I am going to miss the rotating opinion. Now onto the performances.

1) Channing and Phillip are partnered together and for their first dance they tackled the jive choreographed by Jason. This was a very high energy and entertaining routine. The judges said they wanted more, but I thought it was a very strong first performance for two dancers out of their comfort zone.
2) Ashleigh and Jakob are together and performed a sexy and sultry Tyce Broadway routine. It was clear throughout the routine that Jakob has great technique and as a weaker dancer, Ashleigh has a lot of work to do, but for this dance she succeeded and pulled her own weight.
3) Partners Ariana and Peter danced a hip hop routine choreographed by Tabitha and Napoleon. This was a fun routine. The pair was very in sync and played well off one another. I was not as disappointed as the judges seemed to be, but I do agree that Peter was the stronger dancer in this routine.
4) Russell, whose partner Noelle is sidelined with a knee injury, performed a foxtrot choreographed by Tony Meredith. Tony's wife, Melanie, danced with Russell, which made the dance difficult to take seriously. But overall Russell was very smooth. He worked the audience and did well in his performance.
5) Bianca and Victor danced together for the first time in a Travis Wall contemporary routine. This was a very cool, exciting, enticing routine that was amazingly choreographed. There were times during the routine that the pair actually danced and looked like one person. Though the judges pointed out that Bianca at times lacked the smooth movements Victor had, I didn't even notice this. I was grabbed and so believed the story of the dance, especially their great chemistry, that it seemed close to perfection to me.
6) Karen and Kevin performed a Tony choreographed cha cha for their first routine. After the video before the performance, I expected a trainwreck from them, but in the end it was OK. That said, it was hard to take your eyes off Karen who was crazy sexy throughout the dance. But I thought the dance was a bit choppy and not fluid at times, which affected the continuity of the performance.
7) Ellenore and Ryan joined together in a Sonya contemporary jazz routine. This was typical weird Sonya choreography and it was a very exciting dance. I think these two did very well in getting into character.
8) Pauline and Brandon (who only had a day and a half to prepare for the competition) tackled a Jason smooth waltz. It is understandable that this couple was not great, but it wasn't only Brandon who fell short. Pauline didn't totally finish some of her lines and movements, which made the dance seem choppy. Also, a lot of the transitions were awful, which made the dance seem heavy as opposed to the light look we should see with the waltz. This is a usually romantic dance, and at times I believed the romance, but overall this dance was not all that great.
9) Kathryn and Legacy danced a hip hop routine choreographed by Dave Scott. This performance was humorous in that it had a caveman theme and because of this it was an entertaining piece. I expected Legacy to do well in this style, but I was impressed by how well Kathryn performed. I think the best word to describe the good dancing done in this routine is precise.
10) Mollee and Nathan are paired up and for their first dance performed a disco routine choreographed by Doriana. Before I talk about the performance, I want to speak my peace about these two right off the bat: How can the judges talk about how Mollee needs to dance older than she is and then pair her with the youngest guy? Pairing the two youngest contestants together does not make much sense to me. Anyway, this dance, as per usual with disco, was turbo speed. The pair had good energy throughout and there were a lot of cool lift tricks in the dance, but at times Mollee was all over the place. There were a lot of choppy transitions and at times Mollee was shaky on her feet. I was disappointed with the judges. Yes, it was a fun routine, but they did not critique the actual dancing.

Now onto the bottom dancers: The judges decided Ariana, Brandon, Pauline and Russell were the night's weakest dancers, and each had to dance for their life. In their solos, I thought Ariana was too frantic in her movement; Russell is so crazy good at krumping it is impressive; Pauline had a pretty good solo; and Brandon's solo was odd for a break dancer. In the end, the judges sent Ariana and Brandon home, which was good because I really didn't think Russell even deserved to be in the bottom. As for Brandon, Nigel said he is going to look into changing the rules for him so that he is eligible to be in the top 20 in future years.

Now that we have one week of competition behind us, do you have any early favorites? Who do you think stood out as wonderful and who floundered? Leave it here.