So You Think You Can Dance’s seventh season will have just 10 finalists, and they will be paired with all-star dancers from previous seasons of the show instead of each other.

Of the final 10, who will be half men and half women, “one finalist will go home weekly,” Fox announced today. They will be paired with “former SYTYCD finalists who are skilled in various styles of dance, including ballroom, hip-hop, jazz and contemporary,” and those partners will change weekly. Executive producer and judge Nigel Lythgoe previouslyrevealed some changes last week, including the elimination of the top 20.

While Nigel Lythgoe wrote on Twitter that “Only the competitors will be judged not the ‘All-Stars’,” the all-stars’ performance will, of course, impact the vote. The judges’ in this new format isn’t clear, but it seems like their role will be reduced to that of American Idoljudges, even though they’ve previously decided who went home during the semi-final rounds. That ensured talented dancers stuck around, but now, it seems, after the auditions, viewers will be in control.

http://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/archives/so_you_think_you_can_dance/2010_Mar_29_changes

Nigel Lythgoe has announced several major rule changes for So You Think You Can Dance’s seventh season, which will not have a top 20; eliminate just one person per week (typically, two went home), and have dancers changing partners weekly.

Nigel started revealing the changes on Twitter yesterday, writing, “First rule change. Only one dancer will leave the competition each week and not two.”

While the elimination of one person per week, that would suggest there’d be an odd number of dancers, which makes pairing up difficult. How exactly they’ll deal with that isn’t clear, but Nigel later wrote, “The partners will change every single week.”

Today’s rule change is that season seven “will not have a top 20. The pieces are falling into place,” he wrote. I hope the lack of a top 20 doesn’t mean that the judges relinquish control up to the finals; one of the best parts about SYTYCD’s structure is that the judges have more power for a longer period of time, and thus ensure that the finalists are the best possible group.

Nigel suggested more information will come this weekend

http://www.realityblurred.com/realit..._seven_changes