Fame or Famine

Everyone was happy and excited for Bailey Hanks, winner of MTV’s Legally Blonde reality competition. She beat out the other legal blondes and landed her leading role, which she premiered last Wednesday. The other contestants went home, heads hung low, bitter and defeated, right?
Well, not so much.
Surprise! You’ve Got Contracts!
As it turned out, the producers had jobs in mind for all four of the top contestants in the show.

Rhiannon Hansen will play Margot, Elle’s best friend, in the touring company of Legally Blonde
Autumn Hurlbert will join the Broadway cast as Elle’s understudy
Lauren Zakrin will not only join the touring company …read more

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Image details: "A Time For Heroes" Celebrity Carnival – Arrivals served by picapp.com
Lance Bass. Kellie Pickler. Lou Ferrigno. Warren Sapp. These are just a few of the names being rumored as the new contestants on Season 7 of Dancing with the Stars, which has a two-night premiere starting tomorrow on ABC. Some of these are hardly surprising – with the recent HULK movie, Lou Ferrigno seems a natural choice. Some rumors just seem too good to be true: Lance Bass may be performing with a male partner, for example.
One rumor I do not believe is the idea that Paula Abdul …read more

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I have a bone to pick, I’m afraid, with Mia Michaels.
It’s not a big bone, it’s just a little one, an accusation of hyperbole and misleading compliments. It’s simply this: she recently compared Will’s rendition of Tyce Diorio’s contemporary dance piece to something approaching the skill of Desmond Richardson.
I almost hesitate to bring it up, simply because it seems a bit like sour grapes. It’s not, really; it’s more a cautionary word to people who may think that because they watch shows such as SYTYCD, they aren’t missing anything when they fail to buy tickets for their local ballet or …read more

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As Kourtni Lind and Matt Dorame leave So You Think You Can Dance, I’m noticing how the thing that really seemed to knock them out is chemistry. Over and over again, the judges came back to it.

Mary Murphy: “Even though it’s slow, it still has to make us feel something. I didn’t,”
Nigel Lythgoe: “It didn’t grab me. It was a bit like hip-hop on sleeping pills.”
Napoleon D’Umo: “…you’ve just got to get down and grimy a little bit.”

Notice how they didn’t say anything bad about the technique, or the costumes, or the pacing, or really anything about the dance …read more

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As I’m sure you may all suspect, the life of a B5Media entertainment blogger is filled with fast cars, loose women, and free high-class sushi at the finest restaurants in Vegas.
OK, now that you’re done chuckling, I have to say that that last part is actually true, and it’s part of why I like working here: the people are great. But then occasionally an email comes to my inbox with a more unusual sponsorship tie-in to a show that I cover.
Like, So You Think You Can Dance. Which, of course, leads the mind naturally to…fabric softener.
Snuggle Up to Your Happy …read more

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Poor Chelsea Traille, put to the bottom three in the last episode and then ousted by the judges. You can see her solo below; I can see why the judges might not have liked her – in my opinion, while her technique and energy are great, there’s not a real coherence to the solo – instead of having a definable theme or beginning, middle, and end, she just sort of strung a bunch of fairly standard dance forms – flawlessly executed, mind you, but still standard – into a solo. And for the judges in the third season, that’s just …read more

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This just in: Tango is useful to help people battle depression.
Apparently researchers in Australia’s University of New England are exploring whether tango can “boost people’s emotions.”
“While you’re doing tango you can only be in the present — you really have to focus, concentrate, and it doesn’t allow your thoughts to drive into your mind,” says Rosa Pinniger, who is heading up the research. “If people can have a break from their negative thoughts for three minutes, which is the time of the tango, they can realize that… this is what it is, nothing else. So all their problems and their …read more

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Believe it or not, I do have a personal connection to this. You see, I’m not the only dancer in my family. My little sister Ti is a fantastic choreographer and dancer and, like me, a Star Wars geek (yes, our parents raised us well). So for one of her pieces she choreographed a ballet for storm troopers and Darth Vader (in black fishnets, of course). So I’m sure that she would love this bit. Watch it at least to the third dance. If you can do it without spitting out your coffee, I give you credit for immense self …read more

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We all know and love Julianne Hough, the champion of Dancing with the Stars twice over. You probably are also aware that she has dipped her toes in the waters of recording stardom, with a debut album with tracks like

That Song in my Head
Jimmy Ray McGee
Hide Your Matches

You can hear excerpts and learn more over at JulianneSings.com .
But Wait, There’s More!
Because I love you all so much, and because I visited my friends over at Fred Astaire Dance recently, I can share with you a coupon code that you can use for a free download at Julianne’s site. It …read more

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Since I’ve mentioned some of the U.K.’s counterparts to our favorite shows like Dancing with the Stars ( Strictly Come Dancing ) I thought it might be a good idea to go and see how they do things across the pond.
Who are you, and what have you done with Simon Cowell?
The easiest place to start is Britain’s Got Talent, the equivalent of American Idol. I even saw the biting and critical Simon Cowell there in the judges chair. But what’s this? Rather than looking disgusted, he looked engaged! Interested! He was actually the friendliest of all the judges for this …read more

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