Merrick Hanna So You Think You Can Dance
ENCINITAS — Merrick Hanna said it all happened then fast.
The vivid lights, the cameras, the celebrities.
But and so the beat dropped, and Merrick was home.
The 11-year-sometime Cardiff-by-the-Body of water boy who has a love for robots and popular-locking was auditioning for the longtime Fox trip the light fantastic toe competition, "So You Think You Tin can Dance." He wowed the glory panel of TV bear witness producer Nigel Lythgoe, singer/choreographer Paula Abdul and pop singer Jason Derulo with his popping, and earned himself a ticket to the show'due south second stage.
The performance has since gone viral and garnered Merrick an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show, which aired this week.
"I was and so excited," said Merrick, a 5th grader at Ada Harris Elementary. "I was a bit star struck at first because information technology all happened in a blur…there were a 1000000 different things going through my head. I was excited, super confused about what happened side by side, it was a bit overwhelming with all of the lights an cameras everywhere. Just it was mostly crawly."
https://youtu.be/JbfK5USDYSE
Information technology's too been a mistiness for the Hanna family, which includes his parents Shawn and Aletha, and his little blood brother, Sagan.
Aletha Harris said that two years ago, she and the family unit would spend their Saturdays on the soccer pitch, as Merrick was a competitive soccer player.
Simply around December 2014, he started to trip the light fantastic toe — in his room imitating the moves of dancers on YouTube.
"He did that for most six to viii months until someone saw him dancing in the park and said, 'You demand to get this child into dance classes,'" Aletha said.
They enrolled Merrick in dance classes at the local YMCA, and he hasn't looked back since.
"He was on the soccer'southward A team, but when flavor came upwards and he was 9, he told the states he didn't want to play soccer anymore, he only wanted to trip the light fantastic toe," Aletha said. "It was quite the change; instead of going to soccer games, we were going to dance recitals and dance battles. But he loves information technology. He loves the energy and camaraderie between the dancers and the fact that he is frequently times the youngest 1 there."
When asked how Merrick is able to do what he does, Aletha could simply shrug.
"He just does it, that's his secret power," she said. "He can sentry something and practice it. I am glad he applied that to dancing and non ninja arts."
As Merrick improved every bit a dancer, he started posting videos to his Instagram page. Those videos attracted the attention of producers from "So Yous Think You Can Trip the light fantastic," which invited him to audition for this flavor.
A longtime gorging watcher of the prove, Aleta said she knew that dancers who survived the first cut are subjected to a battery of different trip the light fantastic styles. And then, they enrolled Merrick in "serious trip the light fantastic toe" classes for three weeks.
"Yous can't stuff years of technical training into three weeks, simply we tried," she said.
But on the 24-hour interval of the audition, Merrick stuck to his guns — a style that combines robotic moves with more fluid moving ridge-similar motions, a style he calls "flo-bot."
He attempted to fake out the judges past starting his functioning with an awkward rendition of the dance made famous past Alfonso Ribeiro on "The Fresh Prince."
And so, when the beat dropped, Merrick unleashed a series of popular-locking moves that left the judges in awe.
The judges unanimously and enthusiastically voted Merrick to the adjacent stage of the competition.
Shortly subsequently he got off stage, his mother got an email from Ellen DeGeneres' prove, request him to appear on the Ellen show.
The whole family got to attend equally Merrick was interviewed past DeGeneres and got to meet Stephen "tWitch" Boss, the show's disc jockey and a former "Trip the light fantastic" contestant — too one of Merrick's idols.
"The coolest person I met so far is tWitch, he is super awesome," Merrick said. "He is a super good dancer, his pops are astonishing and he tin can pretty much do annihilation, and he's super nice. He even took selfies with us."
Merrick has already attended the "Trip the light fantastic toe" academy, which narrows the 83 contestants down to a final x, but the Hanna family unit can't say whether Merrick has advanced until the show airs later this month.
"I think they'd take my house if I told you," Aletha said with a laugh.
Until then, Merrick is soaking up the residuals of his 15 minutes of fame. He has a couple of auditions in Los Angeles, he will be in a back-to-school Television advertisement for habiliment company H&M and he only finished filming a TV pilot.
He will besides continue what he loves: dancing. He assists the children's hip-hop dance grade at the YMCA — attended by Sagan. He performs at the San Diego Botanic Garden June ix at 5 p.yard. and at the San Diego Fair June 24 with the YMCA dance troupe, and has a performance June 11 with the Evolution Dance company in Carlsbad.
"I definitely never want to end dancing," Merrick said. "But I also desire to exist a robotic engineer."
Source: https://thecoastnews.com/cardiff-kid-wows-on-so-you-think-you-can-dance/
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