it needed more lindy hop

I'd also love to hear your opinions/comments on their choice of choreographer for Lindy Hop.

In the US edition, Nick Williams was hired for the choreographies. And in Canada, we got Benji.

This reminds me of the Dancing with the Stars thread where Laura Keat explained the compromises that come with dealing with TV producers.

So the second judge criticized them for "being all smiles." What's up with that? According to Frankie Manning, lindy is a happy dance! Who in their right mind would set lindy in a warzone?

The two swingouts near the end seemed like an afterthought on the part of the choreographer, just an excuse to slap the lindy label on this mockery.

that blew

BULL[bleep!]!!!!!!

they should have gotten a lindy hopper to do Lindy Hop not Benji doing benji [bleep!]hop!!!!

BULL[bleep!]!!!!!!

you cant compare it to the Dancing with the Stars dance because they at least had the since to go out and get dancers that actually do the dance. all they had was a change in the music. they were still doing the dance they love and having a great time doing it.

in this Canadian travesty, they had a guy that doesn't know do the dance ,and clearly does not understand it, to choreograph this pile of, Benji the, dog, [bleep!]! and you really cannot blame the dancers they were doing what they needed to with what they had, which was a huge piece of producer [bleep!]sucking [bleep!] head orgy of whoring out your own soul! but the dancers looked sloppy, but i don't blame them since they had a choreographer that clear didn't know what he was doing.

...did i say too much... well good!

-Mikey

[bleep!]SUCKER WHORED HIS SOUL!

C'mon Mikey, stop holding back. Tell us how you really feel

i agree, that set the lindy appreciation about 5,000 years back. not since the Garden of Eden has the lindy hop been appreciated less.

ew.

I couldn't even make it through one verse of that.

Wow.

50 classic Lindy aerials executed completely unlike a Lindy Hopper would and with no Lindy context 30 Modern dance (I think it was supposed to be breakaway solo jazz...but it wasn't)

20 Thriller

100 Blech

I just sent a note today to the producers of SYTYCD Canada outlining what I've written below (of course in a more diplomatic way).

WOW, I am so disappointed with SYTYCD Canada. First of all, let me explain where I'm coming from. My goal as a teacher/dancer in the community is to share my love and passion of Lindy Hop, and to educate people into what the dance was back when it started. In fact, that is the very reason that Ann and I went on the show in the first place.

So with that in mind, here are my 2 cents (keep in mind that the opinions below are strictly my own, although I'm sure there are people who share my opinion):

1) In general, what you see in the video is NOT Lindy Hop. Yes they may be actually doing some Lindy Hop patterns (Swing-Outs, Lindy Hop Aerials, etc...); however, there is so much in the routine that is so far off the Lindy Hop map, I cannot bring myself to saying that what they did was the dance I love so much.

2) Benji Schwimmer chorographed the routine?!? Whaaaaaaaaat? Look... I'm not criticizing Benji for his dancing. He is amazing at what he does. However, he is not a Lindy Hopper, he's a West Coast dancer. And although both dances fall under the Swing umbrella, they are both very different dances. Why didn't they hire local Canadian talent to choreograph the Lindy Hop routine? There are tons of people who could have done that: Dan Amores, Max Pitruzella, Zack Richard, Benjamin Ricard, Alain Wong, etc, etc, etc... I really appreciate that Nick Williams was hired as a choreographer for the American version of SYTYCD, and I understand that he really pushed for Lindy Hop to be Lindy Hop (if you know what I mean).

3) The music: I know there is a lot of debate floating around about what you can and cannot dance Lindy Hop to. My opinion, you can dance Lindy Hop to whatever music you like, but in general Lindy Hop works really best with Classic Jazz or Big Band music... it just makes sense to me that we dance the Lindy Hop to the music from the same era that the dance was invented in. And, if you want to dance Lindy Hop to other kinds of music... well, that's one of the reasons why West Coast exists today.

All-in-all, I'm really disappointed with this routine. Other SYTYCD counterparts in other countries have been true to the essence of the Lindy Hop. I understand that this is a TV show and in the end it all comes down to ratings, but from a dancing perspective I think they are relegating the history of a style by not staying true to the dance's form. It contributes to people's mis-education of this incredible dance and can ultimately contribute to the disappearance of it.

Thanks, Alain Fragman.

I contacted Benji and got his side of the story. Here's my article on Lindybloggers in response to this discussion

Quoted from "mity"
i think the routine was badly choreographed. here is a good example of punk and lindy hop bastard child. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYsW7vsXEX8

A bastard child doing aerials in 4" heels. Hot.

Quoted from "TinyMich"
What, in the name of Cthulu, was that song doing in a lindy hop routine?

No idea. I haven't even watched the clip yet. I just wanted to post my love for you, for ref'ing Cthulhu. (I can't even poke at your spelling, as it's a common variant.)

MB

I don't know where they got rock and roll from, but that routine bears even less resemblance to rock and roll (which I danced for about a year prior to finding lindy hop) than it does to lindy hop.

Maybe what you yankees call rock and roll isn't what rock and roll is down under though.