Fox Still Thinks It Can Dance

Network renews dance-competition show for fifth season to air in 2009

By Gina Serpe Aug 04, 2008 3:29 PMTags
Cat Deeley, So You Think You Can DanceJamie Horton/FOX

So You Think You Can Dance isn't heading to that big parquet in the sky just yet.

Fox has ordered a fifth season of the Emmy-nominated summer hit, to air next year.

"We're delighted to have Dance back for a fifth season next year," the network's president of alternative entertainment, Mike Darnell, said.

The unsurprising renewal news—SYTYCD is a perennial top performer, with its most recent episode drawing 8.6 million viewers—comes just days before the fourth season of the dance competition show draws to a close, with the two-night, four-hour season finale kicking off on Wednesday.

Four contestants—Courtney Galiano, Joshua Allen, Katee Shean and the simply named Twitch—remain, with the winner set to be crowned by host Cat Deeley Thursday night.

"Fox is very luck to have television's preeminent performance competitions in American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance, and it's no coincidence that creator and executive producer Simon Fuller and executive producer and judge Nigel Lythgoe have been a part of both these successes," Darnell said.

The champion hotstepper will join the So You Think You Can Dance live tour 2008, which kicks off Sept. 20 in Tacoma, Wash.