Ducky reader MELLIEMEL (hiding her real name for gangsta purposes I presume) was lucky enough to attend the taping of last night’s SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE Top 10 performances. As she promised last week, she’s bringing us all the scoop from inside the house!

MellieMel will spoil you, she’ll treat us, and she’ll make you laugh when we go ON SET WITH MELLIEMEL!

Okay peeps, I got to attend last night’s taping and it was buckets of awesome!
I had my pen and pad handy during the taping. I felt like a dorky reporter scribbling in the darkness. Even now I can’t read some of the stuff I wrote. There were no cameras or cell phones allowed, so I have no pictures.
I thought it would be best to reserve my opinions of the dances until after Wednesday’s show has aired, so as not to prejudice anyone. Therefore, I thought I’d share some fun things you won’t see on the show as well as some observations:

1) My first sighting of the afternoon was Jessi, who was waiting outside to get her tickets. She’s beautiful in person, but seemed a little shy or standoffish. She was with friend, I think. Also beautiful.

2) When we went to take our seats, we bumped into Anya. She’s tiny and gorgeous in person, and really sweet. We told her how much we loved her and wished she was still on the show. She was grateful and said (paraphrasing, “That’s the way it goes.”) LOVE her.

3) Pasha and Neil are HOT.

4) My friend and I were sitting in the risers where the choreographers/family/friends/VIP sit. Just four rows in front of us were Shauna, Shane Sparks, Brian Friedman, Dorianna Sanchez, Dmitri, Donyelle, Wade Robson; his lovely wife Amanda. Benji originally sat in our section but
moved over to another section where his dad was. He wore what looked like a handmade knit ski cap. (Unfortunately, I did not get to personally meet any of the stars. Waaaah!)

5) All the homemade signs are shot in the beginning of the show. There were TONS of Lacey ; Sabra signs, as well as Neil, Sara and Lauren (!). There were no Dominic, Kameron, Pasha, Jaimie, Danny signs at all. (note to self: signs=camera time!) Benji/Lacey’s dad had his digital sign, of course. The stage manager joked that they were gonna film ALL signs except the digital one.

6) Pasha and Neil are still HOT.

7) The set is waaaaaay smaller than it looks on camera.
Cat is freakishly tall and skinny. She looked great in what I call her navy blue Greek goddess dress. Hair was pulled back and curly. Her personality is just as goofy off stage as on stage. Seems really sweet. Genuinely invested in the dancers.

9) Hok was in the hizzouse! (But sadly, couldn’t see him from my vantage point.)

10) Did I mention the hotness that is Pasha and Neil?

11) The dancers not only have fun goofing off in the crow’s nest (where they stand before the commercial breaks previewing the next couple or solo), they practice their poses too.

12) They do lots of backstage interviews while the show tapes, I suppose for fun, candid reactions. (Wish I could get a hold of those!)

13) Benji is such a supportive brother. Anytime she danced he was always whooping it up for her. It’s quite endearing, actually. He also supported the other dancers, and made loud funny comments to the jidges during the show.

14) Oh yeah, Dmitri is hot too.

15) I thought I would get tired of seeing the same solo routine over and over, but it was intriguing. If you tape the episode, it would be fun to watch the solos back to back to really see who did the best job.

16) During the jidges’ critiques of the solos, there was a bug on the stage near Dominic and Lauren. It freaked Lauren out. Luckily, one of the stage crew ended its life. Neil pretended to pick it up and eat it. HA!

17) The show is taped almost exactly in order, save for a few pickups (re-shots) at the end. The only different thing was the critique of the solos at the end. I’m not sure how they’re going to edit them in the show.

18) Seeing them all dance in person just makes me in more awe of their dancing ability. Every single one of them danced their butts off last night. It will be so hard to see two of them go on Thursday.

19) The choreographers and dancers often made standing ovations for the dancers that blew them away. Most notable was when Shane yelled a huge BOO after one of the judges made a comment. Too funny.

20) Pasha. Neil. Yum.

Hope you enjoyed my inside scoop. Can’t wait to share my rants and raves with you after the show airs on Wednesday!

To see the Top 10 Couplings, head on over to my spoiler report.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 12:30 pm and is filed under Cat Deeley, Neil Haskell, Shane Sparks, Kameron Bink, Dominic Sandoval, Wade Robson, Sabra Johnson, Spoilers, TV Boyfriends, Mary Murphy, So You Think You Can Dance, Danny Tidwell, Lacey Schwimmer, Jessi Peralta, Benji Schwimmer, Ducky Does TV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.