imagine my joy

If you know nothing else about me, know this:

I love a good dance-off.

Obviously.

I mean, there you are at the club. The music is loud the cocktails are flowing and those jerks no one likes are bumping and grinding away in the middle of the dance floor, demanding attention and respect from those who fear their high-heeled, polyester-clad, booty-shaking scorn. Enter our heroes. The clothes are pretty, the hair is prettier, and they move without pretense onto the floor--not to compete, but to have fun. They just want to dance. Soon, however, the crowd's attention is drawn to them; their moves are smokin'. The jerks realize they're losing attention. They HATE our heroes! They look across the room, the two couples lock eyes, and with that, IT'S ON.

Imagine if more problems were solved this way.

In cinema, they solve problems all the time (with the notable exception of Grease, in which that cad Danny actually switched partners in the middle of the Hand Jive to dance with that slutty Cha Cha and left darling Sandy all alone without a partner, a dance-off tale that pisses me off and breaks my heart every time I watch it. Seriously. You ALWAYS escort your partner from the dance floor. That's just good manners. Anyway). And while I really can't recommend the classic Girls Just Want to Have Fun enough, a good dance-off is not only found in dance-centric movies.

Starsky & Hutch, Eurotrip and American Pie 3 all featured a dance-off. Zoolander took the concept into the modeling world with its own variation, the walk-off. And who can forget the way Napoleon Dynamite got his friend Pedro elected with the smooth, inventive moves that surprised, amazed and delighted movie fans everywhere?

The dance-off is a beautiful thing. And it makes me very, very happy.

So imagine my joy when I discovered this. An entire TV show that's essentially one big dance-off? And it's on twice a week? Oh, and by the way, it's all different styles of dance, from hip-hop to ballroom and the hip-hop choreographer Shane Sparks is a freaking GENIUS and the dancers are all kind of earnest or swishy or bitchy or all of the above and they compete both as couples and as individuals? And it's all just kind of amazingly AWESOME?

Yeah. Hi. TIVO. I'm so happy.

I love a good dance-off.