"So You Think You Can Dance" will return next summer for its twelfth season and will feature a new Stage versus Street format, Entertainment Weekly reported.
The Emmy-nominated dance competition will be having a new stage format that will divide its dancers into two teams. The Street dancers group will be comprised of participants who perform hip-hop, animation and breakdancing, while the Stage group will be composed of those who have trained in contemporary, jazz, ballet or tap.
During the audition process, the judges and the teams' respective All-Star Mentor will eliminate dancers until they build the two teams with 10 dancers each. During the live performances, the teams will be working with world-renowned choreographers to perform a variety of styles. One dancer from each team will then be eliminated for every week leading up to the Finale.
"The competition is going to be much more exciting for viewers and even more demanding for the dancers," said Nigel Lythgoe, co-creator and executive producer of the show. "Dancers from different genres have always been competitive with each other and we've found a great way to harness that to bring out the absolute best performances in the best dancers across the country."
Lythgoe also said that early on in the competition, contestants who were talented dancers but were not professionally trained easily became overwhelmed, according to Yahoo.
The "So You Think You Can Dance" staff decided to give dancers a better opportunity to get through the auditions by allowing them to train in their respective styles, which could be either street or stage styles, before having them perform other genres during the live performances.
Lythgoe considered the division of styles interesting, and said that there was an air of arrogance between trained and street dancers. He said that this rivalry, however, was quick to dissipate.
"Dancers, above anyone I've ever worked with, are comrades-in-arms," he said.
"So You Think You Can Dance is a rare jewel," said Simon Andreae, Executive Vice President of Alternative Entertainment. "It's produced and consumed with tremendous passion and it's developed one of the most deservedly loyal followings in all of unscripted television."
"We are immensely proud to be returning it to the schedule with a thrilling new twist that will bring it up to date and introduce a whole new set of rooting opportunities."
Audition cities and dates for the twelfth season of "So You Think You Can Dance" are to be announced soon.