I thought we had a thread talking about some of the changes for the upcoming season, but I can't find it, so thought I'd post a couple of things here. I don't really consider anything I'm saying to be a true spoiler, but if you're overly sensitive, stop reading and move on (I'm posting some thoughts on the auditions that I watched).
I went to yesterday's taping of the first (sorta) day of auditions in Detroit. Some of you might recall that back in Season 9(?) when they last visited Detroit I posted some thoughts on what I saw there.
They did do things a little different this time around. First off, last time I'd seen auditions, they'd done the initial round of cuts on the same day as they did the solos, with most of the morning being taken up by group of 10's where they'd cut them with no feedback. This time around, they'd actually done the group of 10s on Sunday. Supposedly they started with around 300-400 dancers and passed 70 on to the solos in front of the judges. (When I saw it previously, the main judges were doing that initial cut, the impression I got this time was that they didn't, and it was done by the guy that seems to be stage manager/in charge of the dancers, I never caught his name, but it was the same guy that had the same role 3 years ago.) On monday, they did 35 of those dancers doing their solos.
Ultimately, for the in-person audience I think this is ultimately better, because what we watched was all solos. I'd say it probably took roughly 10 minutes for each dancer with the intro, solo and then critique afterwards. Some took a little longer because of other things that came up.
The judges were Nigel, Paula, and Jason Derulo (who I've honestly never heard of, although most of the contestants seemed to know who he is, so this is showing something of a generational gap now for me). I actually found Paula to be surprisingly decent with her comments to the dancers, and Jason also seemed to make pretty relevant comments. I'd been a little worried about Paula.
It really kinda surprised me just how far some of the contestants had come to audition here. The number from the Detroit area itself was actually surprisingly small (although I have no idea what the percentage might have been before that initial cut), a pretty significant number had come in from various places in Ohio, and then there were those that came in from much further, like Connecticut, New Jersey, Florida, Arizona and California. Some of those I would think that some of the other locations would have been better choices for them to audition at, but maybe they felt Detroit wouldn't have as many applicants as a place like New York or LA so they'd have a better chance here.
In the auditions, they've changed things a little. It's now just a yes to Vegas or no, with no come back for choreography. That kinda plays into this whole street/stage dance theme they have going on for the season, but I wonder if it's ultimately going to hurt the street dancers. Sounds kinda like when they go to vegas, the street dancers are still not going to be doing the "stage" style of dances unlike how they used to do it. But then, when they make their cuts to 10 of each group and do the shows, then they could be having to do the stage type dances at that point. Seems to me that that could hurt them some in the long run. With the no choreography test, also meant that there was less opportunity for the judges to do something with people that they were borderline on. In fact, at one point Paula wanted to have someone come back a little later and do something different, which ultimately ended up with them deciding they'd have to run that by the standards and practices people for the show (so for anyone that always thought they might be making some of these rules up as they go, that kinda implies that it's not neccessarily true, and that they do have some standards that they need to adhere to). FWIW, I never did see that girl again that day, so I have a feeling that judgement might have gone against her.
Of the 35 that they auditioned yesterday, 15 got tickets to vegas. They'd given us the number of people that they'd sent on from the two cities they'd been at before detroit and a breakdown of male/female and stage/street, but I can't remember what the numbers were (I want to say it was something like 120 people before detroit). About all I remember is that they did say the street side was pretty heavily biased towards guys. Since they're supposedly going to stick with 10 guys and 10 gals, I suspect it's not unlikely that the stage side is going to have more gals than guys (they did say there was no guarantee that the guys/gals ratio would be even on the two sides, but that there would be 10 of each across the two styles).
There were a number of moments that I could see making the television broadcast. It's hard to say though. I wouldn't want to be the person that has to edit things down to make the television program. Figure they have 2 days of auditions that will be somewhere between 14 and 16 hours of taping that they need to cut down to a single 2 hours episode, which really probably means about 90 minutes of actual content.
They do kick the audience out of the theater for the lunch break (and tell you if you're coming back for the afternoon session to come back in about 35 minutes, so not a great amount of time to find lunch). We ended up hitting a nearby subway restaurant, and found that several of the dancers also ended up there for lunch.
Did feel a little sorry for the dancers that had to do outside shots. I saw one returning to the theater when we were lined up in the morning to get in. Windchill at that point was probably around -10 at the highest. Also after taping ran into (almost literally) the group that had gotten vegas tickets coming back to the theater after doing some shooting in the grand circus park area. At that point, the temperature might have been around 10, maybe.
All in all, once again a fascinating process to watch. The real problem for me is that it's so long until the episode airs that it's hard for me to remember a lot of the details of what I saw to match up with what airs. But it'll definitely be interesting to see what I can remember at the time.
