So You Think You Can Dance, FOX's summer dancing sensation, is back again for a fourth season.  In the style of American Idol, the season begins with a lengthy audition process as judges Nigel Lythgoe and Mary Murphy and host Cat Deeley travel the country in search of talented young dancers.

Tonight's two-hour season premiere brought Cat Deeley and company to Los Angeles.  The judges, joined by Mia Michaels, scrutinized many, many young performers in two rigorous days of auditions.  Read on to see what happened.

The audition process was like this.  Each dancer had one minute in front of the judges to make a great first impression.  Unequivocally amazing performers immediately get awarded with a ticket to Las Vegas for the second round of auditions.  Unequivocally untalented performers get sent home right away.  Those in between are asked back at the end of the day for a choreography round.  This gives the judges a second chance to decide whether or not to send them to Vegas.

As expected, there were many talented dancers who were shooed right through to the Vegas auditions, including Devin, Twitch, Leonidas and Aliona, Ricky and Asukah, Kherington and Robert.  Robert performed quite possibly the most jaw-dropping pop routine, which combined pop and lock movements with contortionist moves.  He became Nigel's favorite dancer of 2008.  Robert has never had any formal training, but he is such an instinctual dancer that it'll definitely be great to watch him continue on in the competition.  In all, there were 30 dancers from Los Angeles who were promoted to the Vegas auditions.

Just as in all previous seasons of So You Think You Can Dance, the audition rounds just wouldn't be the same without the wackjobs.  The man they call "Sex" was back tonight, more delusional than ever.  Tonight, he performed a jazz routine to "Livin' La Vida Loca," which is a pretty apropos song choice, if you think about it.  Nigel gave him a dressing down, but I don't think that Sex actually heard anything he said.  The Gold Inferno was also back for some more humiliation on national television.

One memorable performer was a young and hot Italian boy named Jonathan.  He is a beautiful specimen and he totally knows it, but he's only a mediocre dancer.  He did succeed in getting Mia Michaels to lose her cool, but not enough to secure a ticket to Vegas.

So You Think you Can Dance auditions continue next week when the judges drop by Salt Lake City and Dallas in search of more  great dancers.



-Debbie Chang, BuddyTV Staff Writer
(Image courtesy of FOX)