December 14th, 2009 by soullldiva

Ok, I promised that I’d be posting my favorite dances from the past seasons of So You Think You Can Dance. This has NOT been easy. I’m just sayin’, is all. I’m not that familiar with the first couple of seasons, and searching for dances on YouTube can be really frustrating. It seems that FOX is pretty stingy with their videos because they believe it violates their copyright. I say it’s just promotion for the show, right? Oh well. Many thanks to Wikipedia.org for having pages for each season so I can see names and weekly breakdowns!!

I did have some help from a reader also, and she helped point me out to quite a few dances to search for specifically (thanks, Dixly!). However, my first choice isn’t one of hers, but that doesn’t mean a thing, there are so many more to come. These are not in order, they are just fantastic dances. And this one is fantastic, plus, I had never seen this style before.

In season 2, Heidi Groskreutz and Ryan Rankine drew a Cuban Rumba. Heidi thought it was going to be pretty close to the American Rumba, which you see all the time on SYTYCD and Dancing With The Stars. It’s dubbed “the bedroom dance” for a reason, it’s very sultry and slow. However, the Cuban Rumba has its roots in Cuba and Africa as well, and is fast and frenetic. The man communicates to his woman that he wants her and the woman says “no no no” while her movements say “yes” because she wants him,too, as Choreographer Alex DeSilva explains. Yet, they still need to make that chemistry connection and create what I thought was really a courtship/mating ritual dance.

This is a down and dirty dance, mostly done way down in the knees (almost grande plie), arms and shoulders spinning round and round. You can see the influence that Alvin Ailey took from this and infused into his style, and if I’m not mistaken, Bob Fosse was slightly influenced as well.

Plus, their outfits just make you want to put on a wide-brimmed, white hat and sit on the beach with a mojito, extra rum. White with splashes of color in her top and his sash. Really authentic. Watch this and tell me you don’t want to go down south!

Steamy and delicious, and really well done.

Well, thats the first one, many more to come, and hopefully several each week so come on back soon!