Paula Abdul lost it on 'Live To Dance'

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Paula Abdul, once the country’s most endearingly irritating ditz on American Idol, presided over the premiere of Live To Dance on Tuesday night with a disappointing amount of calm sanity. A seemingly endless two hours of dancers ranging in age from 9 to 90, Live To Dance was constructed around her background as a dancer and choreographer.

What it proved to be, however, was an America’s Got Talent limited to fancy footwork; to a Dancing With the Stars without stars; a So You Think You Can Dance with… well, that’s basically what Live To Dance was: SYTYCD without Cat Deeley, but a lesser host with an accent, the toothy Andrew Gunsberg.

Early on, the crowd favorite was Bev and Hap, a couple aged 83 and 68 respectively, who started out dancing primly to “Moon River” but then elicited the hoots of surprise they sought by breaking and popping to James Brown’s “Get Up Offa That Thing.” After a while, however, the age angle — oldsters or very youngsters — became repetitious. Along about the 90-minute mark, I found it difficult to warm my heart sufficiently to feel the gush of affection the judges felt for the wee tykes who formed the act Chi-Town Finest Breakers, and who drew lusty cheers from the studio audience.

Oh, right: the judges. In addition to Abdul, they are choreographer Travis Payne and Pussycat Doll Kimberley Wyatt. (Wyatt is a lot more bearable than The Sing-Off‘s excruciatingly egomaniacal pussycat, Nicole Scherzinger, but not much more articulate.) The ultimate prize is $500,000. The judging gimmick is that the judges award stars: a minimum of two gold stars (as opposed to red ones) are required to pass on to the next level of competition.

As for Abdul, she seems to have intentionally lost her gift for absurdist gush. This night, it was limited to comments such as, “You can’t teach people what oozes out of you,” “You inspire me so much,” and ” You live it, you love it, you are it!”

Simon Cowell’s contribution to competition show-judging was to offer occasionally substantial, real-world criticism to American Idol contestants. (Ben Folds did it even better, and without Cowell’s smirk, on The Sing-Off.) Post-Cowell, judging got snarky whenever it wasn’t campy. But ever since Susan Boyle singe-handedly shamed the cynics on the Britain’s Got Talent panel into weepy gratefulness, shows in this genre have become soggy with sentimentality. (That’s why Sharon Osbourne went from sarcastic sniper to blubbering booster overnight on America’s Got Talent.)

The trio of Live To Dance judges strove to prove that they’re more tough-minded than the America’s Got Talent crew by rejecting some of the contestants whose pre-taped “personal stories,” such as the hearing-impaired dancer C-Bunny and the Paula-obsessed flight attendant Stone Fleshman, might have helped soften the trio’s hearts and brains. But the numbing procession of contestants soon rendered even this quality wearisome.

On Wednesday night, a one-hour edition of Live To Dance will feature finalists who’ll compete in a live “semi-final” tussle to remain on the show and advance.

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