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Are injuries ruining “So You Think You Can Dance” ?
Another day, another dancer injured on “So You Think You Can Dance”.
Billy Bell sat out this week’s competition rounds on the TV dance show with a hurt knee, joining ballet dancer Alex Wong and contemporary dancer Ashley Galvan on the growing list of contestants brought down by injury in rehearsal.
It’s the biggest injury toll in the show’s five-year history. So what’s going on? Even executive producer and judge Nigel Lythgoe isn’t sure. But at least he is honest.
“There is something going wrong this season. I don’t know what it is but we’re going to bring people in to help us do warm-ups, or something,” Lythgoe said, adding that next season the show could mount a “Survivor” style dance-off featuring the injured early leavers.
A third consecutive injured dancer suggests the problem has gone beyond a joke. Not only have injuries removed arguably the most scintillating competitor — Miami ballet dancer Alex — from the show and the public, they have sidelined contestants and forced the remaining dancers to switch partners at the last minute or dance alone.
Worse still, some of the injured are now out of any dancing at all for months and months — and in a career that is short, that is never a a good thing.
Are the top 10 — who sometimes have three routines apiece each week — being pushed too hard? Are the choreographers getting too ambitious in their efforts to repeatedly top their last triumph?


Ummm… you obviously don’t watch the show or read many articles about SYTYCD or you would be aware of how easy the jusges are on Jose. He is a charming young man with a great smile– as the judges have told us over and over again. They have given him very little criticism with the exception of 1 week when he was terrible– and even then they were pretty mild with him. They were more concerned with saying something that would make him frown thatn they were about actually critiquing his dancing. They’ve been much harder on the other dancers and he’s often been given a pass and just told what a great smile he has.