Dance-Offs Required, Fools

Set your DVR my little hip-hoppers! Gina's Blog has a new fave TV show and it's about to get raw!

Taking The Stage is MTV's new reality show featuring students at Cincinnati's School for Creative and Performing Arts. And it is everything I dreamed my life could be.

It's like Fame, only with actual high-schoolers. It's also Hills-esque in that it's a reality show with a lot of set-ups, but it seems guileless in this incarnation. They're students - albeit driven, talented, hard-working students - but they still have those high school hangups, which is entertaining to watch.

This excellent LA Times review describes the attraction better than I can.

The show's executive producer is Nick Lachey. I always like to see Nick do well ever since that no-talent John-Mayer-dating daddy-obsessed weirdo Jessica Simpson dumped him. (Of course she'd date the creep-a-zoid perve who wrote "Daughters." But I do kinda like her shoes. Whatever.)

Sorry, back to the show!

My adoration thus far has fallen on Tyler, the new kid in school who had the moxie to crash fellow dancer (and total annoying drama queen) Malik's closed dance rehearsal for the talent show. (Except Tyler didn't know it was closed, so what-ever Malik.)

But Tyler gets the last laugh because his dance crew totally out-originals Malik's dance crew. Natch. Then Malik whines like a big, fat diva about his devastating loss. Natch.

This was all in episode one.

Oh yeah! And there's a spontaneous dance-off in the cafeteria during lunch. This is the kind of awesome I want to watch on TV, folks!

In the second episode the rivalry continues at the school dance, which also happens to have a couples dance-off. Yeah, you read that right party people! A couples dance-off - at school!

Tyler and Jasmine (they have a flirty thing going-on) team up to compete against the other couples, including Malik and Shaakira. (Shaakira drops some mature knowledge on Malik and tells him to stop being a sore loser about the talent show.)

But sadly, Tyler and Jasmine come in second at the dance-off, second only to Malik and Shaakira. Outrage!

Folks really. Tyler and Jasmine still should have won (even though Jasmine fell during her flip over Tyler's arm) because Jasmine is a ballerina and was doing hip-hop for the first time. And she still rocked it, with Tyler's teaching of course. :)

Malik is talented yes, but he's no Tyler.

God this show is so good. And it also comes with generic shots of Cincinnati, including the Roebling, Clifton and OTR. Yay!

Tune in Thursday when we find out if Tyler is a playa. I'll try to give a full review. And check out this video to see what you're missing!

("I don't want to talk about this anymore... I just want to dance." Jasmine)