So You Think You Can Dance, week 2

This week we had four blissful hours of auditions! I'm going to ignore the Leo vs. Sex dance off of yesterday's Seattle auditions, in favor of some truly brilliant dancing.

Wednesday's audition saw the Kasprzak brothers, Evan and Ryan, auditioning separately, but both performing brilliantly.

Then, last night saw the return of popper Philip Chbeeb, who caught pneumonia the week before Vegas last year, rendering him unable to compete. This year, the judges put him straight through to Vegas without watching him dance, however, this year he came with a partner, Arielle Coker (no video yet it seems). They were brilliant together and she was sent straight through to Vegas as well.

One thing I noticed last night was a significant drop in the number of poppers and hip hop dancers auditioning...or at least being shown. It seemed that in addition to the inevitable barrage of Contemporary Dancers, we got more tap, ballet, and ethnic dancing this year. I only hope that we'll get to see more of these styles once the final 20 are announced and the show really gets going.

I also noticed that a large number of people who made it to the final cut last year are headed back to Vegas. It will be interesting to see how things go for them this year. Looking forward to Vegas week! Who do you think deserves to be in the top 20?