Step by step
If down-to-earth, regular folks are your thing, you certainly won't find them on "Step It Up & Dance" (10 p.m. Thursdays on Bravo), yet another reality dance competition for the millions of viewers who just can't get enough of dance shows, of all things. Doesn't that make you feel like it's the early '80s and you've just gone to see John Travolta's Tony Manero try to become a Broadway dancer in the deliciously awful movie "Staying Alive"?
As easy as it would be to write off "Step It Up & Dance" as just another dance show, it's actually pretty different from either "So You Think You Can Dance" or "Dancing With the Stars." Best described as a dance version of "Project Runway" or "Top Chef," the show features contestants who are mostly professional dancers, either members of modern dance troupes, performers in Broadway musicals, or dancers who've toured with pop and R&B stars. So, while "Dancing With the Stars" attempts to turn celebrities into dancers and "So You Think You Can Dance" takes mostly twentysomething dancing amateurs and turns them into versatile dancers-for-hire, "Step It Up & Dance" takes a group of proficient, professional dancers and basically tortures them with impossibly difficult choreography (think "Quickfire Challenge") for the chance to win $100,000.
This has become a time-honored tradition with Bravo's reality competitions: take talented professionals and make them do insanely difficult tasks while the clock ticks and the cameras roll. You can tell these dancers are much more professional that the ones on other shows, because when they're learning new choreography, they're focused and self-possessed and they don't laugh and chat with each other. Unlike, say, "America's Next Top Model," this isn't about young people, giggling and squabbling. These are intense, motivated, seriously egocentric people. For this reason, Bravo's reality competitions seem to target adult viewers who can relate more to neurotics and control freaks and stubborn, overconfident thirtysomethings than they can to naive teenagers with no notion of how to play nicely with others. While some of the contestants on "Step It Up & Dance" are very young, most of them have already had careers: Mochi has performed with "The Lion King" on Broadway since 2001, Cody went to Juilliard and performed in the Broadway shows "Moving Out," "Grease" and "Mama Mia," Adriana (who was eliminated for her "Staying Alive"-style moves during the first episode) is in a contemporary jazz dance company in New York, and Michael has toured with Mary J. Blige and Beyoncé. These dancers are familiar with hard work, and they mean business.
Of course, this also makes them seriously smug and full of themselves, and somehow a dancer's pretensions are particularly amusing. Miguel begins by telling us, "My dance style is called jazz funk, and I would say that I'm a pioneer of the genre itself. I am the most amazing performer you'll ever see on the stage." He says that telling him he's not talented would be "like telling Da Vinci, 'I'm sorry, you're not a good painter.'" Later, James describes himself as "23 years young and beautiful." Even the dancers who don't brag a lot make it clear to us that the art of dance is a force of good that will eventually end global warming, cure world hunger, and make all the little children of the world hold hands and sing in the streets.
And you have to love the unbridled cheese of the "Pack your knives and go" scene, in which the freshly eliminated dancer enters an empty, dramatically lit studio and does a somewhat melancholy farewell dance for the viewers at home. Through my movements, I express my regrets and hopes for the future! those pointy toes and graceful, sweeping arms seem to say. Or maybe they're saying, I'm one of the pioneers of jazz funk, damn it!
Sometimes it's tough to tell the difference. But at least one thing is clear to these dancers, as it should be to you: Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter!
Next week: The finale of "The Real Housewives of New York City" features more classless, tasteless lessons in class and taste. Then, the suspicions and paranoia build on "Battlestar"!
About the writer
Heather Havrilesky is Salon's TV critic. She also maintains the rabbit blog. You can find more of her columns in the I Like To Watch directory.
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