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Miller to host So You Think You Can Dance Canada

April 04, 2008

Victoria Ahearn
The Canadian Press

TORONTO

MuchMusic VJ Leah Miller's time in the dance studio has paid off.

The bubbly MuchOnDemand personality, who took "baby ballet'' when she was three and later learned tap, hip-hop, lyrical and jazz movements, was announced as host of the inaugural So You Think You Can Dance Canada show on Wednesday.

The hot-stepping competition will start airing on CTV in the fall, and network executives cited Miller's knowledge of dance as one of the reasons she was chosen.

"Immediately I started bawling and my mascara ran everywhere,'' the 26-year-old said of her reaction to the news two weeks ago. She was told over the phone shortly after shooting a segment for MuchOnDemand but had to keep it a secret.

"The worst part was I couldn't tell anybody, so everybody thought I was really upset, and then we had to do promos so I had to fix my makeup and continue on and just keep my mouth shut.''

The Toronto native, who won the title of Miss Junior Dance of Canada when she was 13 and danced competitively until she was 16, was allowed to tell her mom about her new job.

A few days later, she also broke the news to her boyfriend in a unique way. "I ordered a huge cookie cake from Mrs. Fields and I wrote 'I got it' on it,'' said Miller, who heads to Vancouver on Monday for the start of a cross-country audition tour.

The casting call also stops in Halifax, Calgary, Montreal and Toronto.

So You Think You Can Dance Canada is a spinoff of various international versions that see competitors tackling a range of dance styles -- including krump, pop-and-lock and salsa -- before a panel of judges. Viewers help decide who stays and who goes with a weekly vote, and the winner gets $100,000.

The judges include Tre Armstrong, a Toronto-based contemporary-funk dancer, choreographer and star of the film How She Move, and Jean Marc Genereux, an international ballroom champion from Montreal who was a guest judge and choreographer on the U.S. version of So You Think You Can Dance. The third spot will alternate between Toronto-based urban choreographer Luther Brown and Blake McGrath, a Canadian finalist on Season 1 of So You Think You Can Dance. Rex Harrington, artist-in-residence for the National Ballet of Canada, will also guest judge on several occasions.

Miller hopes the series, which she'll juggle with her MuchOnDemand job, will prove to Canadian dancers that they don't have to move to the U.S. in order to make it.

"A lot of the main music videos are shot in L.A. . . . so I think a lot of dancers probably feel the pressure that they have to move there to make it, but I don't think that's the case. There are so many dancers that have done well out of Toronto and that still stay here,'' she said, pointing to the success of Armstrong and Blake.