‘America’s Best Dance Crew’ and worldwide Diversity

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After the excitement of Shawn Johnson’s win on ‘Dancing With The Stars,’ the popularity of ‘America’s Best Dance Crew’ and the success of ‘So You Think You Can Dance,’ if any doubt remains of dance’s resurgence into mainstream popularity, witness the success of Diversity.

Fans chose the British dance group to win ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ even though they faced the worldwide popularity of singer Susan Boyle, who came in second.

The 10-member troupe from Essex and London was rewarded with 100,000 pounds ($160,000) and will dance for the Queen at the Royal Variety Performance. Would the ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ or ‘America’s Best Dance Crew’ winners ever get to perform in front of President Barack Obama? Maybe someday.

The win also shows that even though they made inroads with the Puerto Rican ‘G.O.P.’ dance crew last season, ‘America’s Best Dance Crew’ could easily become ‘World’s Best Dance Crew’ if MTV put their minds (and money) to it. It’s probably an expensive venture to bring them out and put them up, but looking at events like the World Hip-Hop Dance Championship in Las Vegas, we know that the crews are out there.

We’ll see another winner for ‘ABDC’ soon, as the auditions get underway for Season 4 this week. Any crews out there know this (I hope), but here are next week’s audition details:

Los Angeles
Saturday June 6
Foresight Studios
3501 W. Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90026
www.foresight-studios.com

Chicago
Tuesday June 9
Superior Street
2744 W. Superior St.
Chicago, IL 60612
www.superiorst.com

Orlando, Fla.
Thursday June 11
Spotlight Dance Center
Crown Pointe Commerce Park
7751 Kingpointe Pkwy -- Suite 102
Orlando, FL 32819
www.spotlightdancecenter.com

New York
Sunday June 14
S.I.R. Studios
520 W. 25th St.
Between 10th & 11th
New York, NY 10001
www.sirny.com

OK, now back to this world thing. Think about it: The winner of the upcoming ‘ABDC’ season battles with JabbaWockeez, Super Cr3w, Quest Crew and Diversity -- then add five other crews worldwide -- to vie for the title of world’s best dance crew! (And yes, I’ve thrown the ‘Superstars of Dance’ experiment out of my head.)

Is there a dance channel on cable yet? Until there is, get on it, MTV.

-- Jevon Phillips