'So You Think You Can Dance' New Season 12 Renewed, But With Changes

Fox has renewed its Emmy Award winning reality TV series "So You Think You Can Dance." The dance competition will enjoy a 12th season, but with some changes in the way the contests are structured.

The changes are not cosmetic; they will be felt across the ranks of dancers, whether they have undergone professional training or they learned their dance moves from street exposure and experience.

In Season 12, the show will acknowledge that some dancers really shine even if they have had no previous training or have no formal background in dance. However, these non-trained dancers can sometimes feel uneasy or insecure about their situation. These feelings affect their performance, and consequently, their chances of winning.

To even up the dancing field, all dancers who pass the auditions won't be lumped together. Instead, they will be grouped into two teams. The first team will be composed of those who are known as "stage dancers," or those who have had training in such dance genres as ballet, tap, and jazz.

The second team will be composed of non-formally trained street dancers who are experts in break dancing, animation, and hip-hop.

Each week of the competition, dancers will be competing in their respective groups. Those who don't make the grade in their genre will be eliminated.

This process of elimination will last until the season finale.

It is only when contestants from the two teams have been filtered, that those remaining will be asked to perform the dances of the other team. This means that the stage dancers will be expected to perform the moves of the street dancers. Conversely, the street dancers will be expected to perform the kind of dancing done by the stage dancers.