Nigel Lythgoe is part of a small fraternity of uber-successful British men who dreamt, came and conquered America, reclaiming the Olde English colony as their personal piggy bank filled with great accomplishment in entertainment.
Nigel Lythgoe - Nigel Lythgoe is part of a small fraternity of uber-successful British men who dreamt, came and conquered America, reclaiming the Olde English colony as their personal piggy bank filled with great accomplishment in entertainment. © Sylvain Gaboury / PR Photos
Hard work and the right background afforded the reality TV producer a welcome platform to take ideas of presenting dance on a large scale for a viewing audience, hungry for more technical details and variety.
FOX reality dance competition "So You Think You Can Dance" was born from Lythgoe's own choreography knowledge and producing savvy, honed for years in his native England.
The series made its way through the summer on the Fox airwaves in Season five, "So You Think You Can Dance" returned for a back-to-back Season six debut on September 16th to huge ratings.
Lythgoe is no fawning dilettante; he has worked personally with the world's best hoofers, deceased and still with us, and has a keen idea of what people want to see. His instincts tell him we want to see our famous celebrities who have the dancing gift up close and personal.
"We certainly have plans to bring celebrities back. I love the fact that everyone is getting involved with Dance, and I’m amazed at how many people come through now and turn around and say, 'I was a dancer.' " said Lythgoe in a recent conference call with journalists. "It’s that sort of, God bless him, Patrick Swayze, he started off as a dancer and became an actor. Scott Bakula is the same. There are so many that started off as dancers and became actors, so the more that I can tap back and find them, the more fun it is. I want to try to expose and bring back a legacy that’s almost been forgotten in this country of how brilliant your dancers were."
Expanding on Swayze's effect on dance, Lythgoe shared his thoughts on the late Texan who made dancing cool for guys. "Patrick Swayze inspired a generation with Dirty Dancing and just made it so machismo and everybody wanted to dance, and that’s just a brilliant thing. It’s like there are certain members of the world that do that. Michael Jackson. Certainly, I would have said John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. There are certain milestones that come along and Patrick Swayze created one of those."
Even the recent appearance on "So You Think You Can Dance" of Katie Holmes caught people off guard, not really associating Katie and Dance, remembering her as a young TV star in "Dawson's Creek."
Lythgoe was in awe of her ability to multitask and stretch her talents, and raise a small child. "I think the toughest thing in the world is being a working mother. Goodness knows how they do it. I have no idea. I get very frustrated the minute a baby cries. I have grandchildren now and I hand them off very quickly the moment they cry. It’s one of those things that I think women can do that men don’t have the patience for, so I can’t answer your question. I’m incapable of it."
Dancing, like fashion and cuisine, has trends and cyclical shifts. Lythgoe shared his observations. "I’m seeing is this exponential growth that, all of a sudden, we’ve brought street dancing and formally trained dancing together and it’s exploded. Whereas the formally trained dancers didn’t want to take chances, the street dancers will do anything and, therefore, they’re teaching the formally trained, and the formally trained are turning around and teaching the street dancers lines and elevation and things, and it’s absolutely fantastic to see." Lythgoe added, "It’s a great joy for somebody that felt dancing was stagnant for so many years to see this happen and I’ve really seen a huge growth in five years."
Lythgoe elaborated on the dramatic changes in modern dance. "A formally trained dancer would never, ever jump onto the back of their head from a standing start without hands. There has always been this fear and knowledge of no, I’ll hurt myself if I do that, whereas an untrained dancer will just go for it. So mixing those two things together, we have something very exciting, which I think has brought integrity back into the world of dance and everybody realizes that you have to be an athlete nowadays to be a dancer."
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