Dance Like a Man

I've been catching up on my summer TV shows lately, and I wish I had stayed more up to date with So You Think You Can Dance.

When I was watching their "Vegas" week, I noticed one of the male dancers, named Moises Parra, that danced with great skill but had a definite feminine aura about him.

In these "weed-out" rounds, they had 4 - 6 dancers in a group all doing the same routine, and then critique, praise, or boot them.  As I watched the group that Moises was in, he was kicking their asses.  When the group finished, I was then surprised to hear Paula Abdul (who had actually been a joy to see...up until then) tell Moises that he had to "dance like a man."

W.  T.  F?

It was really hard to believe such harsh criticism and heteronormative bullshit was coming from one within the dance community, a place where the LGBT community is very prominent.  They criticized him so much that they made him "dance for his life" even though he had already proven that he was the best in his group.  Luckily, he again kicked ass during his performance and the judges had no way of booting him.

The Top 20 (Top 10 Stage and Top 10 Street) were announced at the end of "Vegas" week, and Moises was there with the best.  I was glad that he made the top 10 stage dancers and was hoping that he would progress relatively far, although there were a number of other strong dancers, too.

Moises is not built that big, which is something they often treasure with the men on SYTYCD since they pair them with women for some of the dance lifts, so I knew that was going to be one thing that could hurt him.  His dancing has been fantastic, though, and I have been surprised that he has ended up in the bottom three each week.  His performance in Top 20 and Top 18 should easily have earned him a pass for both weeks, but only the Twitter vote saved him in Top 20 before going into the Top 18.

On the Top 18 show that I watched tonight, they said good-bye to Moises after neither the Twitter vote, nor the judges failed to save him.  It was too bad.  He's such a graceful and elegant dancer, and I love that he dances with all of his soul.  He's a better dancer than most of the street dancers, and had this been the regular format, I think he could have gone quite a ways.

Congrats on such a strong performance, Moises, and I hope we see more of you in the coming years!