‘So You Think You Can Dance’ returns to Las Vegas — PHOTOS

When “So You Think You Can Dance” came to Las Vegas in mid-April to film its annual callback rounds, it was a homecoming on several levels for Nigel Lythgoe.

For starters, the show’s lead judge and executive producer has a home at Lake Las Vegas.

The TV tapings also marked the return to what the show has referred to for 10 of its 12 seasons as “Vegas Week,” after the callbacks were kept closer to Hollywood last year in an effort to save money.

“It lost the magic for me,” Lythgoe admitted of last season’s change. “It lost the magic of bringing these kids — a lot of them haven’t ever left their neighborhoods, haven’t left their cities — and to be able to say, ‘You’re going to Vegas!’ and see the smile it puts on, the energy it brings to them. Now, transfer that to, ‘You’re going to Pasadena!’ and it doesn’t work.”

And, after having been staged at Mandalay Bay and Planet Hollywood Resort, this year’s callbacks were housed at the Westgate in the same theater in which Lythgoe worked decades ago during the hotel’s days as the Las Vegas Hilton.

“When I first came here in 1972, I think it was, I was here as Shirley Bassey’s choreographer, and she was co-headlining with Bobby Darin,” Lythgoe recalled. “And this was the first place I ever came to (in Las Vegas). So for me, it brought back so many memories.”

Plenty more memories were being made for the 220 dancers who advanced to the five days of rehearsals, auditions and rejections. The highlights will air at 8 p.m. Monday and July 6 on KVVU-TV, Channel 5. The grueling nature of those long, long days, though, rarely translates to TV.

This season of “So You Think You Can Dance” pits stage dancers against street dancers, and the show reached out to a couple of its alumni to coach the teams.

The stage dancers’ mentor, second-season runner-up and frequent contributor Travis Wall, kicked off the first day of his choreography round at 7 a.m. It didn’t wrap up until 1:30 the next morning.

“That first day was bruuutal,” Wall said outside the cumbersomely named Elvis Presley Theater at the International Showroom while the judging panel was sending street dancers home. “But it kind of, like, shocked everybody. Like, ‘OK, this is what we’re in for. If we want to be on the show, this is what we have to go through.’ ”

Having experienced Vegas Week as a dancer and a choreographer, Wall knew better than most what the hopefuls were going through. If the dancers slept at all, Wall said, they may have hit their beds about 6 a.m., giving them precious little rest before they headed back downstairs to the judges at 9 a.m.

“So, at this moment, you are completely exhausted. Your body has shut down,” Wall said. “To be completely honest, the food in this hotel is terrible. So they have not really been replenishing their bodies with the nutrients they need. There’s fried food all over this hotel. So I truly feel bad for them in this situation, because I know how you feel when you eat food like that, or if you’re not even eating at all.

“So they’re tired. Their bodies have been through it. And so at this moment is when, if you really want this, you push through. … It’s mind over body in these situations.”

Stephen “tWitch” Boss, the fourth-season runner-up and “So You Think You Can Dance” all-star who’s captaining the street dancers, also has seen both sides of the callbacks.

“This pressure is like nothing else you’ll ever feel, because during an audition, you want to give everything that you have, which runs the risk of you looking incredibly stupid and being humiliated in front of millions of people,” he said once the street dancers wrapped up their group routines.

“It feels like every mistake holds the weight of the world. That’s what it’s like to be here,” Boss continued, “because the longer you go on, the more you realize about the opportunity that you have in front of you. … I applaud them, because everybody is incredibly focused right now.”

That opportunity is much bigger for some of the street dancers, and “So You Think You Can Dance” is going out of its way to protect them with the new format that ensures 10 of them make it to the live shows. Despite their eye-popping moves, most of the street dancers are self-taught. Few if any have ever had to learn choreography, which has led to too many of their early departures over the years.

“We’ve got kids on the street side that have never been out of the Bronx or never been on an airplane before,” host Cat Deeley said, “which in this day and age, kind of blows my mind, you know? And I think it adds another layer of jeopardy. Because a lot of them come from not great economic backgrounds, and so they haven’t had the chance to learn choreography. So this show is also an opportunity for them to expand on the talent that they have right now and also change their lives.”

After Lythgoe and the newest members of the judging panel, Paula Abdul and singer-dancer Jason Derulo, delivered their verdicts, dancers either bounded out of the theater to be interviewed by the show’s camera crews or made a much slower, more reluctant walk through the theater doors.

So what were the judges looking for?

“For me, heart wins out 100 percent of the time,” said Abdul, the former “American Idol” judge, Laker Girl and dancing partner of MC Skat Kat. “We’re first drawn to the technique and how well-disciplined and how well-executed (it is). It’s like attraction. Two people meet: attraction. The initial attraction is there. Then you start peeling away the layers and the complexity of it, and it’s who is standing out and evolving as a magnificent force.”

Derulo has been a guest judge and performer on “So You Think You Can Dance.” But it was his experience auditioning dancers for music videos and tours that caused him to think long and hard about committing to a full summer’s worth of doling out bad news.

“I was a little reluctant. I didn’t want to be the person breaking people’s dreams all the time and having to go through that up and down,” he revealed. And, let’s face it, he had to know that Abdul wasn’t about to be the bad guy.

“It’s tough. It’s always tough, especially at this point, because you’re losing great dancers. At this point, everybody’s great in their own right. … But at the end of the day, somebody has to go home, so you can only keep the strongest.”

Despite putting in the long hours and overcoming frazzled nerves and exhausted bodies, all but 20 of the hopefuls would be sent packing. Some eliminations were met with stunned silence. Others drew gasps from their fellow dancers. But most took the bad news in stride — at least as long as the cameras were rolling.

“They have to treat this like any other audition,” Derulo cautioned.

“They have to keep that in mind that this is an audition. It’s not the end of the world after it’s over. You can come back next year, or you can go audition for something else. This is not the end of the world.”

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter: @life_onthecouch.