So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) is an American reality television dance competition show that airs on Fox in the United States and is the flagship series of the international So You Think You Can Dance television franchise. It was created by American Idol producers Simon Fuller and Nigel Lythgoe and is produced by 19 Entertainment and Dick Clark Productions. The series premiered on July 20, 2005, with over ten million viewers and ended the summer season as the top-rated show on television. The first season was hosted by American news personality Lauren Sánchez. Since the second season, it has been hosted by English former children's television personality and game show host Cat Deeley.
The show features a format where dancers trained in a variety of dance genres enter open auditions held in several major U.S. cities to showcase their talents and move forward through successive additional rounds of auditions to test their ability to adapt to different styles. At the end of this process, a small number of contestants are chosen. These contestants move on to the competition's main phase, where they perform solo, duet, and group dance numbers on live television, attempting to master a diverse selection of dance styles, including classical, contemporary, ballroom, hip-hop, street, club, jazz and musical theatre styles, among others. They compete for the votes of the broadcast viewing audience which, combined with the input of a panel of judges, determines which dancers advance to the next stage from week to week, until a winner is crowned as "America's favorite dancer".
So You Think You Can Dance has won seven Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Choreography and a total of nine Primetime Emmy Awards altogether. Licensed variations of the show, produced for broadcast markets in other nations, began airing in August 2005 and dozens of localized adaptations of the show have been produced since, airing in 41 countries to date. The sixteenth season premiered June 3, 2019. On February 20, 2020, the show was renewed for a seventeenth season, that was set to air in summer 2020, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the season was indefinitely postponed on June 18, 2020, and eventually premiered on May 18, 2022. In December 2023, it was revealed that an eighteenth season would start filming in Atlanta from December 4, 2023, to January 29, 2024. The eighteenth season would premiere on March 4, 2024. Lythgoe departed from the show in January 2024, following a sex abuse lawsuit from one of the show's judges Paula Abdul. JoJo Siwa would join the judging panel to replace Lythgoe. In May 2026, the series was canceled after eighteen seasons.
Show format
A typical season of So You Think You Can Dance is divided between a selection process, during which expert judges select contestants from a wide pool of applicant dancers, and a competition phase, during which these "contestants" (more typically referred to as the "Top 20") compete for votes from home viewers. Although it is produced over months, the selection phase is highly edited and usually constitutes only the first 2 to 4 weeks of aired episodes with the competition episodes forming the remaining 7 to 9 weeks of the season.
Open auditions The open auditions, the first stage in determining a season's contestants, take place in 2 to 6 major U.S. cities each season and are typically open to anyone aged 18 to 30 at the time of their audition, although season 13 focused on a younger class of contestants, ages 8 to 13. The cities where auditions are held change from season to season but some, such as Los Angeles and New York City, have featured in most seasons. During this stage, the contestants perform a brief routine (typically a solo, but duet and group routines are allowed as well) before a panel of dance experts usually headed by series creator and executive producer Nigel Lythgoe. This panel then decides on the spot whether the dancer demonstrated enough ability and performance value to proceed further. If the contestant exhibited exceptional ability in their performance, judges award "a ticket to Vegas" (or in more recent seasons "a ticket to the Academy"), moving them instantly one step forward in the competition. Alternatively, if judges are on the fence about the contestant, they may ask the contestant to wait until the end of that day's auditions to participate in a short test of their ability to use professional choreography.
Callbacks The second stage of the selection process is referred to as "the callbacks" (this round was referenced as "Vegas Week" for much of the show's run, as it was held in Las Vegas, but was called "Academy Week" from season 13 to season 16, later called the "Choreography Round" in season 17). The callbacks consist of a several-day-long process in which the remaining hopefuls are tested for overall well-rounded dance ability, stamina, creativity, and ability to perform under pressure. The contestants are put through a battery of rounds that test their ability to use various dance styles; these are typically some of the more well-represented genres that are later prominent in the competition phase, such as hip-hop, jazz, ballroom, and contemporary. Additionally, the contestants may be asked to perform further solos in styles of their choosing and participate in a group choreography round in which small teams of contestants must display their musicality and ability to communicate professionally by choreographing a performance to a randomly selected piece of music. This challenge is notable as being the only time contestants are asked to choreograph themselves, aside from solos.
The callbacks are often collectively portrayed as one of the most exhausting and stressful stages of the competition; each successive round sees cuts in which a significant portion of the remaining contestants are eliminated from the competition and are given a limited amount of time to adapt to styles they are sometimes wholly unfamiliar with while being physically taxed by the rapid progression of rounds and a limited amount of rest. At the end of this process, usually less than 40 contestants remain in a pool the top contestants are chosen. Most seasons have featured 20 "top" contestants for the competition portion of the show, but season 1 was represented by a Top 16, season 7 saw a Top 11, seasons 13 through 16 and 18 have featured a Top 10, and season 17 saw a Top 12.
Contestant stage Following the contestant selection process, the show transitions into its regular competition phase, which lasts for the rest of the season. The competition stage is typically divided into eight weeks, generally with two contestants eliminated per week. Contestants are paired up into female-male couples that will sometimes stay paired for much of the remaining competition if neither is eliminated (since season 7, contestants have also been occasionally paired with "All Stars", returning contestants from previous seasons who pair up with the contestants, but who are not themselves competing). These couples perform 1 or 2 duets per week in different styles which are typically, but not always, randomly selected. These duets, as with all non-solo performances at this stage in the competition, are choreographed by professional choreographers. Before most duet performances, a video packet of clips of the couple preparing to perform the routine is shown. These packets are intended not only to demonstrate the couple's efforts to master the routine, but also to give glimpses of the personalities and personal histories of the contestants, as well as insights from the choreographer as to the thematic, narrative, and artistic intentions of the piece. Following each duet performance, the week's panel of judges gives critical feedback, often emphasizing the two key areas of technique and performance value. Duets and their accompanying video packets and critiques typically take up the majority of an episode but are often supplemented by solos, group numbers, and occasionally guest dance or musical performances.
In season 1, each week of the competition featured a single episode, with contestants' eliminations pre-recorded the week they occurred and then broadcast at the beginning of the next week's episode. In seasons 2 to 8, the show's weekly format was split between two episodes, a performance episode, as described above, and a results show which revealed the outcome of the at-home-viewer voting following the performance show of the same week. More recent seasons have returned to a one-show-per-week format, but with each week's episode typically reflecting the results of voting for the previous week's performances, with these results revealed at the end of the following week's performances. Depending on the stage of the competition, each week may feature eliminations that are based entirely on an at-home viewer vote, or the vote may simply create a group of bottom contestants from which the show's judges will select the final eliminations. Voting has also varied by season (and often within seasons) regarding whether the voter selected individuals or couples. Following the announcement of their elimination, contestants are typically given a brief send-off video packet. Each competitive episode ends with a quick recap of the night's routines accompanied by voting prompts. Episodes typically last around two hours, commercials included. There has also been variability in how long couples are kept together and how the at-home-viewer votes are balanced against judge decisions, though ultimately at some point in every season, the judges stop using their power to save contestants, and eliminations are determined exclusively by viewer votes. The total number of hours shown in a given week during the performance phase of the competition has varied from two to four hours.
The finale episode is often the most elaborately produced show of a season and features the last performances of the contestants, encore performances of many of the season's most acclaimed routines, guest dancers (including returning contestants from previous seasons and cast members from other international versions of the franchise), musical performances, and multiple video packets chronicling the course of the season's events, all culminating in the announcement of the winner of the competition. Most seasons have featured a single winner, while seasons 9 and 10 featured both female and male winners. Following the closure of the season, the Top Ten contestants often go on tour for several months, performing hit routines from the season among other performances.
Judges A typical season of So You Think You Can Dance is presided over by a panel of 2 to 4 permanent judges, supplemented by occasional guest judges, with the panel sometimes expanding to twice or more its normal size for callback episodes or season finales. Executive producer and co-creator of the show Nigel Lythgoe was the only judge to have sat as a permanent member of the panel across the first 16 seasons, although ballroom specialist Mary Murphy has also sat as a permanent member of the panel for the majority of seasons; Lythgoe was set to return as a judge on the show's eighteenth season, but left the show in January 2024. Other permanent judges have included film director and choreographer Adam Shankman, contemporary choreographer Mia Michaels, pop music and dance icon Paula Abdul, dancer and actress Maddie Ziegler, actress and singer Vanessa Hudgens, music and dance artist Jason Derulo, choreographer and television personality Laurieann Gibson, actress, dancer and singer JoJo Siwa, actor and singer Matthew Morrison and successful show alumni Stephen "tWitch" Boss and Dominic "D-Trix" Sandoval.