Bang Bang (my baby shot me down) - Dance and Death

I'm a not-so-closet fan of So You Think You Can Dance because of dances like the one posted here. Yes, Nigel Lythgoe is a creepy sexist asshole, yes the screams and cries from teens at the tapings are annoying and of course, yes, the whole premise of the competition often leads to aggravating popularity politics determining who gets to continue to dance and who leaves. But I don't really care in the end, because sometimes you'll get to see people like Eliana Girard and Alex Wong completely embody a song in beautiful movement. Dancing to Nancy Sinatra cold, slow rendition of a ballad about love lost and the violence that is felt through rejection, Girard and Wong (as per their choreographer - Stacey Tookey's- intructions) create bent, gnarled shapes with their bodies through and alongside beautiful, dynamic movement to tell a story of lust and death. Sometimes dance tells such stories better than any other medium. As one movement leads into the next, as lust guides us toward death and death kickstarts lust, you can understand and really feel how the two impulses are connected.