Fox's So You Think You Can Dance 2 reality dance competition revealed its Top 10 dancers last night, with the show's judges deciding that after home viewers had voted them into the week's bottom three couples, Ashlee Nino and Musa Cooper would be eliminated from the competition.
ADVERTISEMENT
All of the season's seven remaining couples had performed on Wednesday's performance show, after which America voted and gave the fewest votes to dancing pairs Ashlee and Dmitry Chaplin, Musa and Natalie Fotopoulos, and Travis Wall and Martha Nichols. Once So You Think You Can Dance host Cat Deeley revealed the identities of the week's bottom three couples, all six of the dancers performed solo routines for the judges.
After deliberating backstage, lead judge (and show executive producer) Nigel Lythgoe revealed that the quest to become America's favorite dancer had ended for Ashlee, a 21-year-old popping specialist from Dallas, TX, and Musa, a 28-year-old hip-hop/street funk specialist from Camden, NJ.
Beginning next week, So You Think You Can Dance 2's competition pairing process will change. Instead of continuing to perform in pairs with the same partner they've had since the show's finals began (assuming their original partner wasn't already one of the finalists already eliminated), the ten remaining members of the season's Top 20 finalists will begin being randomly re-paired before each week's new dance assignment.
Even more significantly, So You Think You Can Dance 2's voting and elimination process will also change next week. Rather than continuing to vote for their favorite dance couples, home viewers will now begin voting for their favorite individual dancers (each dancer will now be assigned their own voting phone number.) And with viewers now allowed to directly vote for their favorite individuals, the show's judges will be completely eliminated from the elimination process -- similar to American Idol's format, the male and female dancers sent home next week will be the male and female dancers that receive the fewest votes from home viewers.
ADVERTISEMENT
The ten finalists remaining on So You Think You Can Dance 2 are Dmitry Chaplin, Natalie Fotopoulos, Heidi Groskreutz, Allison Holker, Donyelle Jones, Ivan Koumaev, Martha Nichols, Ryan Rankine, Benji Schwimmer and Travis Wall. Next week, in addition to performing two new routines with their new dance partners, each of the ten finalists will also perform a solo routine during Wednesday's special two-hour performance show.