Robbed: Kaba Modern on America’s Best Dance Crew
March 20th, 2008 · 13 Comments · posted by kat
**Hey all, it’s Kat from Style Scoop/Food Frenzy … I’m guest blogging tonight because I’m such a nerd for America’s Best Dance Crew …
I’ve always secretly wished that I had amazing dance skills ever since I watched Soul Train as a kid and even more so when my kid brother and I started watching breaking videos. So it’s no surprise that my butt has been glued to the couch every Thursday to watch “America’s Best Dance Crew” on MTV.
As soon as I found out that an OC crew made it as one of the 12 finalists competing for the title and a $100,000 cash prize, I was beyond stoked.
UC Irvine’s very own Kaba Modern had six members from its hip-hop dance team competing. These kids — Mike Song, Jia Huang, Lawrence Kao, Cindy Minowa, Tony Tran and Yuri Tag — represented the newest generation of diverse hip-hop dancers and quickly earned a reputation with the judges for their precise, intricate choreography.
Alas, after earning high praise from the judges for nearly every routine, Kaba Modern found themselves at the bottom two last week and tonight, they were eliminated after making it to the top three. Click HERE to read the story. The final two crews are San Diego’s JabbaWockeeZ and Boston’s Status Quo.
I was at the taping of tonight’s episode — which actually took place Tuesday night in Culver City. Only had a minute to interview the weary-looking Kaba Modern dancers backstage before we had to get seated for the actual show. And I have to say this, Kaba got ROBBED …
When Status Quo was announced as the No.1 vote-getter from viewers and were safe from elimination, my jaw hit the floor. Are you kidding me? That loud eruption of cheers that you heard on the show tonight? Didn’t happen. When the announcement was made, there was light applause. People around us were confused and shocked. There was booing. And chants of “Recount! Recount!” Of course, that was noticeably absent from what aired on TV.
I have nothing against the guys from Status Quo and as fun as their flips and stunts are on TV, I don’t see much dancing at all. I mean, if all I wanted were flips and stunts, I’d pop in “Bring it On” or watch ESPN’s televised cheerleading competitions. The SQ dancers themselves have even admitted that they were performers more than dancers in an interview with a reporter from the Boston Globe. And they’ve been dinged by the judges nearly every week for sloppy choreography.
I’ll go out on a slight limb and say why, from a marketing perspective, it makes sense to keep Status Quo. They’re a scrappy, authentic, from-the-streets crew from the East Coast. It makes for better TV to pit a West Coast crew against an East Coast crew. So Kaba had to go. That’s my theory. I wish I could have seen them in the finale against JabbaWockeeZ. Or if it had to be an East Coast crew, Live in Color could have danced circles around (and out-stunted — if that’s a word) Status Quo. Even Iconic was better than SQ. Heck, I’d even take BreakSk8 over Status Quo.
That said, JabbaWockeeZ better emerge as the winners. They killed it on tonight’s episode and they’ve consistently been on point and entertaining to boot … guess we’ll find out on next week’s live finale.
I hope to see more crews from OC make it onto the show next season (which is set to air in June). That is, if it turns out to be a legit competition to find the best dance crew, not stunt crew.
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 11:19 pm and is filed under TV: Reality shows.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
