Chehon's Inspired Solo on SYTYCD

With three weeks left in season nine of So You Think You Can Dance, only six dancers are left in the competition.

The three men and three women who remain on the show are immensely gifted dancers, but none is more talented than 23 year-old Chehon Wespi-Tschopp.

Chehon's story is an interesting one. Born in Chicago, Chehon (pronounced key-on) was adopted in early childhood by Swiss parents, who then moved their family to Australia and later to Switzerland.

With the support of his adopted family, Chehon left home in his early teens to pursue his passion for dance at the Royal Ballet School in London. Since graduating, he has become a professional dancer, performing for two seasons with the Los Angeles Ballet.

While he is low-key and humble and sometimes even awkward in on-camera interviews, Chehon is elegant and intense when he takes the stage to dance. In July, we posted a moving contemporary routine Chehon performed with his dance partner Witney, and since then he has continued to impress.

This week, it was a solo performance from Chehon that blew me away. Though his solo only lasted a minute or two, the young dancer was particularly inspired to pour everything into the performance, as his (adorable) mother Edith had flown in from Switzerland to see him dance.

With the fluidity, grace, and power of his movement, Chehon paints the stage like a canvas.

Movement That Moves Us - Chehon and Witney on SYTYCD

A couple of months back I shared an incredibly beautiful and pained solo dance performance by a very unusual dancer named Hampton Williams. Since then, I've faithfully watched So You Think You Can Dance each week on Fox, and waited patiently for that next great inspirational routine.

Last night's contemporary number choreographed by Stacey Tookey, and danced by Chehon Wespi-Tschopp and Witney Carson, was that piece. The routine was about love, or to be more precise about the end of love, and Chehon and Witney completely gave themselves over to it. 

The choreography perfectly captures the devastation and turbulence of disintegrating love, and the bodies of Chehon and Witney, like our own conflicted yearnings during those gut-wrenching moments of life, are simultaneously fused together and forced apart.

Dance = Art.

(The first minute is fun facts about the dancers. The routine starts around 1:18.)

 

Exorcist-Style Dancer Surprises and Moves Audience To Tears

SYTYCD contestant Hampton Williams

Last summer, I wrote about how surprised I was when dance performances on the Fox reality show So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) made me cry.

Since then, I've reflected on the moments in the show that I found most emotionally charged, and I detected a fairly predictable pattern: a few weeks into the season, after I've begun to appreciate the contestants and their personal struggles, someone dances a beautifully choreographed contemporary piece that reenacts a devastating heartbreak (like the one linked here), and I get weepy.

None of those of conditions were present during the SYTYCD season 9 debut last week, which is why I was so completely surprised to find myself moved to tears when a man named Hampton Williams performed a routine in his original "exorcist" style of dance.

Hampton's unusual style of movement is difficult to describe, but if you imagine an over-caffeinated drug fiend dancing a ballet-inspired hiphop routine, then you're getting close. The total commitment of every inch of his body to this unique genre is partially what makes this performance work, and the element of surprise he brings adds something too. But more than any of that, I was touched by Hampton Williams' ability to convey something honest and devastatingly painful through his movement, his face, and his eyes.

As one Twitter fan of SYTYCD said of the performance, "I don't even know why, but I was crying at the end."

I won't spoil any more for you, but suffice it to say that after viewing this, you will owe a humble young man named Hampton Williams a debt of gratitude for his willingness to so beautifully put his private pain on public display.

To get the full effect, I recommend that you turn up the sound and click the title bar at the top to view this full screen.

Who Knew Dancing Could Make Me Cry

I am not a professional dancer. Okay, that’s a bit of misstatement. To say I am not a “professional dancer” implies that I might have some talent as a dancer, but that I have never danced for money. I am, in fact, not any kind of dancer, professional or otherwise. 

The sad truth is I simply cannot consistently move parts of my body in a rhythmic (or even remotely eye-pleasing) fashion when music begins to play. Put on old Aretha Franklin song or a new Lady Gaga tune when I have been drinking and you will see a valiant effort at something – that still falls far short of being classified as “dancing”– along with the most severe case of WMB (white man’s overbite) ever known to mankind. With dance having only been a source of intense personal discomfort and public shame for me, I would never have expected to fall in love with a dance reality show on television, and yet, that is exactly what has happened. So You Think You Can Dance has made a dance believer out of me.

 My primary exposure to watching organized dance prior to SYTYCD (that’s what we groupies call the show) was theme park dance reviews of cartoon movie songs. With that exhaustive background, I never imagined that dancing could captivate me, much less stir me, of all non-dancing people, to tears. So You Think You Can Dance proved me wrong. If you watch the show, you already know what I’m talking about, and if you don’t watch the show, well, the season finale was last night so you’ll have to wait a few months. But it will be worth the wait.

I’m linking a clip below to my favorite performance of the season – one of the routines that made me weepy. The routine is a contemporary piece set to the song Fool of Me sung by Me ‘Shell Ndegeocello, and performed by two of the shows best dancers (Sasha and Kent). If you've ever had your heart broken, you’ll probably think about that as you watch the clip – even if you don’t want to. One viewing tip: you might want to click on the title bar at the top of the clip to open it in a larger YouTube window.

 
What I learned from SYTYCD is that dance, when done with artistry and soul, is as striking, as gut-wrenching, and often as emancipating as any other art form, and that even a guy whose primary dance move is synchronized finger-pointing on the steering wheel when an Adele song plays on the iPod, can be moved to tears by dance.