Well, I think he can dance! How about you?

First of all, I have to give choreographer Stacey Tookey.credit for bring one of the few people who have used Gary Jules’s cover of Tears For Fears’ “Mad World” (or Adam Lambert’s cover of that cover) correctly in a creative sense. Her disturbingly relevant routine for Bill Bell on “So You Think You Can Dance,” as he portrayed a homeless man having an uncomfortable reunion with a friend on the street, tapped into the song’s somber repetition and despair as well as the lyrics’ plaintive yearning for some human connection in a world where “people move in circles.”

Unlike, say, the producers of an ABC soap opera who flogged it to death as part of a tedious storyline for a guest movie star, Tookey understood the delicacy of the song’s mad world, acknowledging the unhinged nature of madness and regret and anger and horror, but keeping it barely, but correctly, restrained – isn’t that what it feels like sometimes when you’re fighiing hysteria?

I am pretty sure that he’s safe this week, because even if the voters at home put him in the bottom, I can’t imagine the judges choosing him, not with all the praise he got.

BTW: Tyce’s work for Lauren’s “Who’s Got The Pain?” was brilliant. She’s no Gwen Verdon…but then again, who is?

Billy Bell’s tenure on Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance has had more twists and turns than one of the complicated choreo­graphies he’s performed on the show.

Last year, the Dreyfoos School of the Arts graduate was cast on the weekly dance reality competition, only to have to pull out at the very beginning when he was diagnosed with mono – "I don’t think anyone was more heartbroken than I was," admits Bell, 20.

So when the Loxahatchee Groves native was added to the current Season 7 cast in a surprise twist that extended the announced 10 dancers to 11 – "Crazy mind games!" – it seemed Bell was well on his way to dancing himself to victory. But fate, in the form of an injury, intervened and saw him out of commission last week, even though a doctor had cleared him to perform.

This left Bell, the third injured dancer in as many weeks, automatically on the chopping block, along with low vote-­getting dancers Robert Roldan and Jose Ruiz, and at the mercy of the judges. But Bell, along with Roldan and Ruiz, was granted a reprieve until this week, when all three were expected to dance for their lives and their spots on the show Wednesday night, meaning that the local favorite will be on the show at least until tonight.

It’s a setback, but Bell, who took a break from his studies at The Juilliard School in New York to do the show, says such problems "make me want to work harder."

Across the country and back at home, Bell’s friends and family are rallying to keep him in the mix, which "is what’s keeping us running. Being able to make one person happy with something I’ve done? That alone is really satisfying," he says.

Among his local support crew is his dance teacher, J.J. Butler, who has known him since he started taking classes at her Vantage Point Dance Studio in Lake Worth as a kid. She remembers suggesting to him that he audition for So You Think You Can Dance, but he was just shy of his 18th birthday, the minimum age.

"The next year, he didn’t even tell me he was doing it. But he called and said, ‘I got straight through to Las Vegas (the show’s second round of auditions)!’ " remembers Butler, who brought her star pupil back to the studio as a faculty member and choreographer for her young students. "Through this process, he’s remained humble. To me, he’s still plain old Billy."

He’s also made time since his graduation from Dreyfoos to come back and work with current students there, an experience that’s "huge" for them, says Kris Lindinsky, director of development of the School of the Arts Foundation, because his success is something "they can kind of aspire to. The other thing is that he is just a nice young man, good with the students and such a great role model. He’s also helped with our alumni events and has been one of our celebrity alumni, always really willing to give back. None of this has gone to his head. It just seems like he’s got the ability to do it all."

So far, Bell, whose original genre when he began dancing with hip-hop, has loved his krump routine on the show the most – "It’s so self-expressive!" he says – and has tried to stay positive in the face of the competition. That means avoiding the blogs and the "bizarre" comments that sometimes show up on them, and taking the judges’ critiques with a grain of salt and trying to learn from them.

"No matter what a criticism is, even if it seems like a sharp kind of stab, clearly it means that there’s something I could have done to prevent it, or that there’s something to work on," says the always upbeat Bell.

"No matter what it is, you have to find a positive in it."

And he’s not sitting around wondering what could have been if he’d stayed on the show last year.

"I think everything happens for a reason. I guess something or someone had it in their plan that I was supposed to be on Season 7," Bell says. "Now, I have an even bigger family!"

The idea of National Dance Day on July 31 has taken off in a major way nationwide, and Palm Beach County isn’t going to be left off the dance floor.

The City of West Palm Beach is putting on Ginger’s Dance Party from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the West Palm Waterfront. DJ Sobes and DJ Chaos will be providing music for the free celebration.

National Dance Day was first created by Nigel Lythgoe, the executive producer of the Fox TV series So You Think You Can Dance and founder of the non-profit Dizzy Feet Foundation.

Before the event, dancers are invited to learn the official dance by choreographers Tabitha and Napoleon D’Umo for the song “Club Can’t Handle Me” by popular hip-hop artist Flo Rida.

Boy, was that close!

Loxahatchee Groves’ own Billy Bell was one of three guys in danger of being eliminated on last night’s “So You Think You Can Dance,” because he’d declined to dance the night before because of injuries, even though the show’s doctor had cleared him. And in a slightly shocking twist (is anything ever truly, truly shocking on reality TV anymore?) judge Nigel Lythgoe informed the kids that NONE OF THEM WOULD BE GOING HOME!

Hurrah!

At least until next week.

What happens now is that all three will be dancing again next week, but two of them will go home. We’re all hoping that Billy is not one of them. He told host Cat Deeley, who truly has become my favorite TV mic-holder (Hiss boo, Seacrest!), that he was going to make sure that his leg cooperated next week.

Go leg!

Well, this is depressing.

Billy Bell, our local boy representing the 561 on “So You Think You Can Dance,” became the third dancer in as many weeks whose injuries prevented them from dancing. It’s especially disheartening in the case of Loxahatchee Grove’s Bell, who was sidelined last year early in the competition when he was diagnosed with mono, but came back this season.

Here’s what happens – dancers unable to perform because of injury are automatically placed in the bottom three, along with the lowest-rated dancers who actually did get to perform. Which means that viewers will have to choose between the two worst dancers they saw and the one they didn’t get to see at all.

I’m worried about our boy, y’all! We’ll see tonight.

Last year, Dreyfoos School for the Arts graduate Billy Bell was looking forward to making his hometown proud as a competitor on FOX’s “So You Think You Can Dance,” … until, suddenly, he wasn’t.

“I don’t think anyone was more heartbroken than I was,” admits Bell, 20, who had to drop out of the show at the very beginning of the competition when he was diagnosed with mono. Although he had taken a break from his studies at the Juilliard School to do the show and was understandably disappointed, the setback “made me want to work harder. At the same time, watching the season didn’t hurt at all because I still had my family of dancers on the show. It was great just to watch them go through that tough experience. And now, I have an even bigger family.”

And that’s because Bell, of Loxahatchee Groves, is back on the show this season, preparing Wednesday to dance his heart out in order to stay in the competition. Across the country and back here at home, his friends and family are rallying to keep him in the mix. He relies on that support, he says. Read the full story

Update: Corrected to show none of the men have been cut from the cast.

It could’ve been potentially disastrous.

On So You Think You Can Dance, the final group started with six men and five women. After a few weeks of cutdowns, more women saw the door than men, leaving six men and three girls. Now, while it was still possible for each guy to pair off with a female counterpart, the powers that be decided the time had come for two guys to be paired up.

And so classically trained ballet dancer Alex Wong — of the Miami City Ballet — was paired with hip-hop master Stephen “Twitch” Boss.

But what could’ve been an out-and-out train wreck turned into one of the show’s top routines of this season and possibly any other.

Take a look at Alex — who also talks glowingly of his boss, Edward Villella — showing that because he’s pretty much up for any style, he has to be considered the clear favorite to take this season’s crown:

I hate to call anyone out, but Nigel Lythgoe is a darn liar.

A few weeks ago, Lythgoe, executive producer and judge on Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance, discussed the biggest change on the show this season — that instead of a top 20, there would be just five men and five women competing.

And he was asked about Billy Bell, the young hopeful from Loxahatchee and the Dreyfoos School of the Arts, and Alex Wong, the Canadian transplant who currently dances for Miami City Ballet and Edward Villella.

He said only one of the two would make it.

But as we’ve seen, the show’s powers that be have decided that there’s room after all for both Bell and Wong. Both made the final group after the show decided to have a top 11 rather than a top 10.
Read the full story

Billy Bell (top); Alex Wong.

Zap2It columnist Korbi Ghosh pulled in a big scoop for long-time So You Think You Can Dance watchers.

She got Nigel Lythgoe on a quick on-camera interview to talk about the show. One of the twists this year, as Lythgoe notes, is that because the finalists will be paired up every week with one of the show’s all-stars, there will only be 10 finalists instead of the usual 20.

So when Korbi gets Lythgoe to mention the top dancers, he talks about both Billy Bell, the 20-year-old dancer from Loxahatchee Groves who made last year’s final 20 but had to quit due to mononucleosis, and Alex Wong, the Miami City Ballet dancer who was unable to reach the finals two seasons ago because the company wouldn’t allow him to leave his contract.

And Lythgoe says only one of them makes it into the final 10. Like I said, kind of a shocker, considering how well-liked both Bell and Wong are among fans.
Read the full story

Russell Ferguson celebrates his victory on 'So You Think You Can Dance'. (FOX)

Russell Ferguson came into So You Think You Can Dance as the first “krumper” to reach the top 20.

He emerged to win the whole thing.

Ferguson edged out contemporary dancers Jakob Karr and Kathryn McCormick and won the Season 6 title by proving time and again that he was much more than a krump dancer.

Certainly, Ferguson was at home with his own style’s wild limb movements, along with other hip-hop variations, but he also proved adept when asked to perform anything from jive to lyrical jazz to Bollywood.

It wasn’t all happy news for Ferguson in the season finale, as a muscle pull forced him to sit out from performing some of the season’s favorite dances, of which he danced in several.

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