Deaf dancer auditions for SYTYCD

[garden_hoe21]

I thought people here might get a kick out of how Nigel (the white male judge with an English accent) "talks to" the auditioner. (Bonus points for "so inspiring! So brave!")

Comments

[nafs]

Oh yay. Um, Nigel, you don't talk *to* the interpreter, that's incredibly rude. Although I did like the first judge's comments where she basically (among the "brave" and "inspiring" stuff) told him he needed to learn more and come back.

We had a b-boy with, spina bifida, maybe? - he used elbow crutches and didn't have full control of his legs, definitely couldn't support weight on them - audition for a season of SYTYCD Canada. The judges were definitely interested, (there were a lot of "inspiring" type comments as well, of course) he was a good dancer and they sent him to choreo to see if he could handle other styles, they ultimately didn't think he'd be able to handle partner work.

I never did figure out if I thought that was a fair judgement or not. He never indicated that he'd done any partner work, so that was definitely a strike against him. I find it hard to believe there couldn't be ways to use props and chairs and such that he could have the support to lift a partner within a routine where necessary, on the other hand if he'd never done any of that before, he and/or his partner could get seriously hurt in rehearsals while they were figuring out those adaptations.

[dirty_diana]

Luca Patuelli! (Wikipedia says he has Arthrogryposis, a muscle condition.) His performances were great but Tre crying about how inspirational he was? was *terrible*. And the place they chose to cut him was sketchy, to me. It was pretty obvious that they were never truly considering putting him through to ballroom, which made the whole thing feel like a circus act.

And I agree that the choreographers work around people's strengths and weaknesses all the time. But Toronto Week and its equivalents are all about culling the non-conformers.

(I think that's the same year that a girl with epilepsy made herself sick staying up all night during the group round. I wanted to yell at the tv, take care of yourself! But at 20ish and chasing a big break, I probably would have done the same thing.)