Dance TV: Just Popularity Contests?
Tonya Plank of Explore Dance wrote a very insightful article about dance on TV.
Among her many great observations, she contends that most reality shows featuring dance are more popularity driven than talent driven. Once the dancers are chosen for the cast, the audience votes for the person to be eliminated. To say that the shows are popularity contests is supported by last season’s Dancing With the Stars when Marie Osmond made it to the final three and Sabrina Bryan was voted off midway through the season. Both were so obsurd, it’s impossible to explain them without the popularity contest idea.
Here’s an excerpt of her article:
What these programs have in common is that, being reality shows, they are partly popularity contests, meaning the winner must be likable as well as talented. Alongside live performances of the dancing, we see clips of the dancers struggling to learn each new dance, each exhibiting idiosyncratic weaknesses and strengths, and footage of the dancers interacting with each other behind the scenes, telling us or others their life stories, how they came to dance, who they are in a nutshell. These shows create characters, dancer personas, dancer divas, dancer gods – people who are both real and have somewhat constructed identities. Charisma, life stories, challenges, hardships, accomplishments, how each dancer generally comes across, personalities as exuded both during the dance and behind-the-scenes segments, comes to the fore. Of course the dancer must dance well; if she can’t, the audience will vote her off early on, before it even has a chance to get to know her. But while the judges are critiquing technique, audiences are interpreting the dance movement in a way that is largely informed by the dancer’s personality, as revealed both onstage and off.
What do you think about this? Do you think the shows should work this way? Or do you think they should judge solely on talent? Leave a comment to share your thoughts!
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