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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: June 15, 2011
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: So You Think You Can Dance, “Top 20 Perform” (Season 8, Episode 6).
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: There are some seasons of So You Think You Can Dance that take a while to center around a prospective winner. Weeks and weeks of different dance styles, choreographers with varying degrees of creativity, the wild card that is one’s partner — they can all wildly effect that prospects for a contender. Other seasons, however, a winner can announce him- or herself right from the very beginning. Here was how season 8 winner Melanie Moore kicked off her season.
Not every pair of dancers gets a choreographer as strong as Travis Wall on their very first go-round, so in that way Melanie and Marko were fortunate. Of course, taking on a routine this concept-y — two stone statues are in love and dance together in their statuesque way, until that moment when they get to break free — could have been a disaster for dancers who couldn’t keep up with it. Not the case here.
As the later seasons of So You Think You Can Dance began to incorporate returning all-stars, as well as alumni choreographers and judges, the show took on the feel of a self-contained franchise. But rather than allow that to suffocate the show, those alumni gave the show a sense of fulfilling its own promise. Travis started out in season 2 as a contestant, graduated to choreographer status, and eventually became one of the show’s best success stories. “Turn to Stone” was one of his finest moments.
