Another Thursday, another round of difficult eliminations on So You Think You Can Dance. As the top 10 were cut to eight, it was the first night fans of the show got to see which individuals were winning the popular vote.
Even though the top 10 gave it their all on Wednesday’s performance show, there wasn’t enough love from America to keep Clarice Ordaz, Mitchell Kelly, Ricky Jaime and Jordan Casanova safe for another week. While the audience gasped when Ricky was sent to the bottom four, no one seemed more shocked than Jess Leprotto, who was speechless walking offstage after he was deemed safe.
While we waited for the judges to make their final decision, we were treated to an awesome performance from girl pop group Blush with a cameo from Snoop Dogg! Call us starstruck, but no one can beat his swagger or his near blinding bling.
However, all starry eyes aside, two contestants had to go. After fighting tooth and nail with self-choreographed solos, Mitchell and Clarice were let go. The news made it impossible for Jordan to hold back tears, along with Mitchell and Clarice, who had equally wet faces when addressing their fellow contestants.
When we caught up with the pair after the show, they were doing all right and feeling optimistic about their future in dance.
“You never know what may happen on the show,” Mitchell told us. “Even the greatest dance of the night could be in the bottom. I wasn’t expecting it. I thought I was going home the first week! I’m happy that they kept me here. I have master classes and things like that at home so I’m going to be really busy before I go on tour and my goal is to be in movies and dance and sing at the same time.”
“I think just making it in the top 10 was a comfort,” Clarice added. “Making it this far and being able to perform on stage was great. I’m sad to leave but excited because I get to be part of [ the tour]. I’m going to be searching for other opportunities past that and working on myself. That’s what we’ve been working on for the past five weeks and that’s the discipline we needed and I’m prepared to continue that.”
Judge Nigel Lythgoe and guest judge Neil Patrick Harris explained the decision.
“It’s always about everything we know about them, but it’s easier to turn around at this stage of the game and say it is about the solos, because when one solo is better than another, we can leave it at that,” Nigel told us. “I think we all agreed that it was Mitchell’s turn to leave us. We had a discussion over the girls, and we felt Jordan was stronger at the end of the night.”
“I sort of in the deliberations kept looking at Nigel, because he’s the boss, he’s like the mafia,” NPH said. “That being said, I tried to look ahead and imagine those four dancers in future weeks and tried to imagine how they would be and that influenced my decision. I can only imagine the physical and emotional toll this show takes on them week after week and especially being voted into the bottom must be demoralizing and then having to pull it back up just must be exhausting.”
If you didn’t get enough of NPH on SYTYCD, stay tuned because he dropped a hint that his own dancing feet might be showcased in the new season of How I Met Your Mother.
“We are doing a [hip-hop] number on the show for a future episode, I don’t know if i was supposed to say anything about it at all, so I’m going to leave it as a little tease. I leave here and go rehearse for another three hours. I feel like a So You Think You Can Dancer!”