TV’s dance floor is getting crowded

McClatchy Newspapers

ST. LOUIS

As Fred Astaire would say, TV’s “gotta dance!”

You can hardly change the channels these days without seeing a pasa doble, a pirouette or a pop.

All styles of dance are celebrated in Fox’s summer sensation “So You Think You Can Dance,” which averaged 7 million viewers Wednesday and beat every other show of the night.

Earlier, more than 16 million people tuned in for the finale of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.”

Little girls leap and spin, while their mothers squabble and their teacher shouts, in Lifetime’s reality hit “Dance Moms,” which just began its third season. (A spinoff, “Dance Moms: Miami,” completed its initial run earlier this month.)

On MTV, “American Idol” judge Randy Jackson is in his seventh season of searching for “America’s Best Dance Crew.”

The prime-time dance floor is getting crowded.

New this summer is the CW network’s “Breaking Pointe,” an unscripted series that goes behind the scenes of Ballet West, a company in Salt Lake City.

In July, Oxygen will launch “All the Right Moves,” which follows choreographer Travis Wall and three friends as they attempt to start a contemporary dance troupe in Los Angeles.

This week on ABC Family, “Gilmore Girls” creator Amy Sherman-Palladino returned to television with “Bunheads,” which follows a former ballerina turned Vegas showgirl (Broadway star Sutton Foster) as she moves to a small town and joins her new mother-in-law to run a dance studio.

With so much dance on TV, including shows such as “Glee” and “Smash” in which dancing teams with singing, the assumption may be made that this is boosting interest in studying dance or seeing it live.

In St. Louis, opinions are divided on that among people involved in dance in various ways.

Ashley Krupinski grew up dancing; her parents, Mark and Caren Krupinski, have operated the Krupinski Academy of Dance for more than 30 years.

Ashley Krupinski works there as a teacher-choreographer.

“I love ‘So You Think You Can Dance,’” she says. “I mainly watch for the choreography, because it’s really innovative, really pushes creatively. My parents watch and enjoy it, too.”

She has also sampled “Dance Moms.” “I was worried that it would turn out to be negative for dance teachers,” Krupinski says. “But I think people get that this is just one studio. I’m thankful that this is not the dance world I grew up in. But the show is one of those train wrecks you can’t look away from.”