Upfront Memories ’08 – Dancing with the Stars of SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE

“When you wish upon a star…”

I’m not a dancer…at all. But give me enough of the Captain and coke, or in this case some booze filled concoction dreamt up by the kind people over at Fox, and I’ll be the first one on the dance floor. And that’s just what happened a few weeks ago at the Fox Upfront party in NYC.

Now let me set the scene. I’m sitting in the back of theater, ground level at the NY City Center listening to Kevin Reilly talk about the upcoming Fall season. But in the back of my head I’m thinking, ‘please stop talking to so I can go to the after party and meet Pacey’. Reilly is wrapping up, and I’m readying my purse when I hear the word “dance”. Wait, this is Fox. Home of SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE. Is perhaps Sabra there? Maybe Benji. Yes they are! And along with them are Lacey, Ivan, Stanislav, Nick, Anya, Lacey, Hok, and Ryan. Hold my hat, my favorite SYTYCDaners are on the stage. I quickly whip out my Flip camera and try to capture their routine while simultaneously trying not to burst a blood vessel in my head caused my unnatural excitement.

Fast forward to the Fox after party. Stars everywhere you look. But my mission (after meeting the aforementioned Pacey aka Joshua Jackson) was to find my dancers. While on my search, I bumped into the gorgeous Cat Deeley whom I got to chat with for a few minutes (and yes she just as fabulous as you imagine her to be.) She mentioned that her “beebies” were going to be stopping by the party. And just minutes later I started spotting them milling about.

While I was waiting for my friend Kelly in the bathroom line, I spotted Ivan Koumaev (better known around here as Jailbait Ivan). My favorite dancer of Season 2, I was giddy with excitement and wasted no time in going to say hi. Because you know, it’s completely natural to chat someone up while they are waiting in line to use the port ‘o potty. But I soon found out that’s not what Ivan was doing. He was just waiting for his buddy Travis…yes, Travis Wall. Hot damn! Well of course Travis soon joined us and after some gushing I snagged a pic. Both guys could not have been sweeter. Just really nice. And did you know they are roomies in the Big Apple? Yup. Oh can you imagine the late night dance parties? I can’t…I just can’t! Anyway, mission accomplished. Pictures with my two favorite SYTYCDancers of all time. Done and done. Or was it?

Back inside the party I spotted the rest of the SYTYCD kids taking pics with the crowd. I made my way over and snagged a few pics myself. How exciting! We were all kind of chatting and talking when the DJ started doing his thing. The dancers were hesitant to get out there and do what they do, but I wasn’t having it. See I was there, there was a dance floor and some good music…they were dancing, and no, they didn’t really have much of a say in it. I dragged the reluctant Ryan, Travis and Ivan to the dance floor and the rest just kind of followed. For the next hour or so I proceeded to make an asshat of myself my dancing along side these profressional, amazing dancers…and I’ve never had a better time dancing in my life. Travis, who said he’d be up for talking SYTYCD with us later in the season, actually thanked me at the end of the night for getting them out there and dancing. It was my pleasure Travis…soooo my pleasure.

Everyone was just fantastic, and they danced with all the fans who quickly surrounded them. I may at one point have ended up on the stage with Benji, Travis and Ryan dancing in front of the 1,500 or so people there…but there’s no video so I choose to believe it never happened.

So for all you SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE fans, who may never get the awesome experience of dancing with your favorite dancers, here’s a few videos that I took that night….just imagine yourself there and dance along (but stay sober…one up me).