America's Best Dance Crews

(Note: My apologies for the lack of personal pictures. I was the stupid law abiding attendee who actually heeded the "no cameras" sign. I won't be making that mistake again.)

Thursday night Eddie & I headed out to Nokia Theater to watch America's Best Dance Crew Live Tour. We've been hooked on the show since Season 1. We were pleasantly suprised to find out that we were not the oldest people in attendance. The crowd was in fact quite diverse, spanning many generations and ethnicities.

The tour featured the winning crew from Season 1, the Jabbawockeez.

The rest of the line-up included Season 2's winners, Super Cr3w, Fanny Pak, BrkSk8 and ASIID. After a brief appearance by Randy Jackson, the show kicked off with each crew doing a short piece of original choreography, followed by each crew introducing themselves as well as each member. Jabbawockeez definitely received the most applause during the intros, but the individual dancer who received the most applause was Joey from ASIID. He has a very substantial fan base; he could probably go solo if he wanted to. In fact, after seeing him live, I think he is the strongest dancer on his crew. After all of the introductions were made, each crew then performed a compilation piece of all their most memorable moments and performances from the show. Even though we had seen all of these numbers before, it was still fun to see them again live. While it was no surprise that Jabbawockeez and Fanny Pak received very loud applause, I was suprised to hear all the tween girls shrieking for the boys of BrkSk8. Personally, my tween self would have been shrieking for Rynan of the Jabbawockeez. Don't judge.

The host then announced a special guest performance. Eddie and I hoped that it would be Kaba Modern. OC isn't too far off after all! Alas, it was Fysh n' Chicks instead. While they have improved since their days on the show, they were still a bit blah in comparison to the other crews. Except Taeko:

She's awesome. I have always thought that she needs to swim away from the other fish and join Kaba Modern instead. After getting our hopes up (and then dashed) the first time, you would think that Eddie and I wouldn't dare do the same again when the host said that another special guest was getting ready to take the stage. You thought wrong! We were out of our seats before the announcement was complete. Kaba Modern turned out to be the second special performer!
Next there was an extended old school inspired group number involving all of the crews. I enjoyed this number a lot since it took me back to my high school days. One of the most memorable parts of this number was when the boys of Fanny Pak, along with Joey from ASIID, let their bodies go with the flow to Madonna's classic "Vogue". After taking it back to the old school, the Jabbawockeez took the stage for a futuristic themed number. It was wonderful to see them dance for minutes instead of seconds. They are truly a great group of performers and I love how effortlessly they can infuse humor into their routines.

Post intermission Big Boy from Power 106 came out to introduce yet another special performance. Unfortunately it was not an encore from Kaba Modern. Instead, this dude came out on the stage with a microphone.
He lip synched badly to two songs. Very badly. Like so bad that when he actually sang a phrase or a line for real it was jolting. In fact, he didn't even bother lip synching along to all of the words of the first song he performed. He just strutted between stage left and stage right for most of it. Eddie and I just looked at each other and shrugged and eye rolled. The teen girls seemed to adore him however.

The second half of the show was comprised of each crew doing their favorite performance from the televised show. I'm sure you are all capable of using Google and You Tube, so I'm just going to list them:

1. Fanny Pak -- "When I Grow Up"
2. BrkSk8 -- "Closer"
3. ASIID -- "Dangerous"
4. Super Cr3w -- "Ninjas"
5. Jabbawockeez -- "Red Pill"

The final group performance was a tribute piece to the Jacksons -- Michael and Janet. This was followed by a faux battle between the crews. Despite the fact that it was obviously choreographed, it was nice to see all the crews having a good time with each other. The crowd certainly had a good time watching them.