Tonya Plank: Step It Up And Finally Dance

Last Thursday's episode of Step It Up And Dance , Bravo's new reality dance show, which premiered three weeks ago, was, for the first time, actually about dance. Before this week, I felt the show had been more about personalities, catering to the judgment-prone "peanut crunching crowd" (in Sylvia Plath's words). For example, in the first episode, considerable time was devoted to the dancers greeting and interacting with each other in their assigned apartments; you could see in their eyes how they sized each other up. We were shown Miguel badmouthing others and asserting his beliefs that he is by far the best dancer. We are shown others rolling their eyes at him. The competition was on before the dancing even began. Then, throughout the first two weeks during rehearsals and even actual performances, rather than showing us the full routines or even a single dancer's body in its entirety, the camera would focus in on faces. During the first week's dance segment, we saw a close-up of Miguel's ... [link]