'So You Think You Can Dance': Partnering Is Such Sweet Sorrow

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Even Tyce's Broadway number for Will and Katee didn't exactly live up to the choreographer's promise to blow the roof off the joint. It was fun, sure, and definitely well executed by the dancers; it just spent way too much time literally and figuratively trapped in the ''boat'' of that Guys and Dolls song to really take off. I wanted to like the number far more than I actually did, a feeling that was even more potent after their second routine of the night. Yep, unlike the judges, I didn't loooooove that pas de deux; the song choice, David Archuleta's ''Imagine,'' felt totally disconnected from the movement, both in form and in content. That remixed echo tacked on to the middle of the song? Yeah, but no; Nigel should know better than anyone that Archie doesn't really do existential angst. Again, Katee and Will danced it to near perfection, but with due respect to choreographer Desmond Richardson (and I mean that; YouTube his name and you'll quickly see why), it simply didn't connect for me. Thank goodness both Will's and Katee's solos were so rich, effortless, and expressive.

Which is more than I can say for Chelsie and Gev. It's a good thing Chels never had to dance for her life, because, like so many SYTYCD ballroom dancers before her, she hasn't a clue how to do a solo in her style that looks like anything other than a tryout for a position in the Ministry of Silly Walks. Gev simply bricked it, letting his missed first trick throw off his game for the rest of the number. But they both wholly redeemed themselves by committing from tip to toe to their paired routines. By now, Chelsie's technique has shown her to be, along with Katee and Will, one of this season's true ''serious'' dancers, but I was also duly impressed with how, by sheer force of will, Gev got me to ignore his comparable lack of technical finesse. I had no idea that Gev's ''bounce'' was off in the jive until Lil' C (!) told me so, but when Mary and Nigel then piled on, it made me wonder if perhaps we'd seen the last of this Kazakh-American B-boy. (Side note: If you looked closely enough, I'm pretty sure you could see Nigel's butt clench after Mary critiqued the jive by referencing Dancing With the Stars.)

Gev's old partner Courtney fared better last night, though her new B-boy has far more skill that her last one and, it seems, is much more the man. She may have been overshadowed by Joshua in their Bride of Frankenstein hip-hop routine, but her solo was pretty spectacular, and that rumba would not have worked had Courtney not given as much heat as she was getting from Josh. (The choreographers, though, really need to get more creative with their song choices. ''Hero''? Seriously? I mean, do we really need to be encouraging the Swaybots, who were out in force last night?) But how hilarious was Joshua during the judging, when he, um, joshed Twitch and Will for going shirtless so often? And how skeevy was it of Cat to start poking around for Josh's nipple afterwards? It was a real treat, though, to finally see Joshua do his thing in his solo, and I especially liked how he started an underground dance-off between him and Twitch by duplicating the same solo-ending chest thrusts Twitch used in his. (I'd give round 1 to Joshua purely because he didn't then pose with a giant J shield on his T-shirt.)

NEXT: Twitch's brick waltz