So You Think You Can Dance's seventh-season premiere featured auditions from New York and Miami, two cities with nothing in common except status as key Bravo Network demographics. Hurrah. As guest judge (and upcoming permanent panelist) Mia Michaels sat alongside Adam Shankman and Nigel Lythgoe in New York and honorary Tim Burton character/choreographer Sonja Tayeh helped in Miami, viewers were acquainted with two hours of fun new performers and weird new losers. And the night's best and worst performances? The former features a whimsical lad with a fighting dream, while the latter features a quizzical lass with a frisky daddy. Someone's family tree is forgetting to fork.
Best: Teddy "Sho Cute" Tedholm
The name may sound like a bear wearing a hardhat in a children's book, but Teddy Tedholm's purpose in dance goes beyond mere illustrations. He touches on a childlike wonderment with his throes, the sort of fight and intention you associate with a stick-thin second-grader proving his gym class foes wrong and muscling his way up a climbing rope. Mia Michaels and Adam Shankman teared up and discreetly hid the dodgeballs they planned on hurling.
Worst: Daria "Hop on Pop" Kopylova
You say Daria bored us. She had a plan to be memorable, and girlchild, it worked: For her audition, she writhed about with her own father. It started platonically, sure, just before she caressed his extremities, flew over his shoulders, and buried her cheek in his thigh. The spacey sister worked the hell out of her knockoff Marilyn Monroe gown, but she also worked on getting social services sent to her house. Is this a cry for help? Or just a ride to the mall?