Have you seen Jackson Wang’s new music video, Blow?

Directed by Daniel “Cloud” Campos, “Blow” is a riveting visual feast — cinematic, theatrical, atmospheric — with sharp, stylish choreography and smart camera work and editing. (I will confess here that I am not a fan of smoking or anything that glorifies it, and yet … that opening scene just looks cool.)

Here it is if you haven’t seen the video yet (or if you want to watch it again for the 100th time):

The dissonant music in the opening scene as the camera pans around the broken grand piano to the elevator is reminiscent of the passage that plays for about 15 seconds in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video when the full moon appears (2:10) and even a bit of the climax (11:25) that ends with a scream, followed by complete silence.

The collective scream and silence in “Blow” is far more dramatic, of course. But what Wang’s video reminded me most of is a group dance number from Season 2 of So You Think You Can Dance waaaaay back in the summer of 2006. (The fact that this was 16 years ago makes me want to cry a river of tears — 2006 does not feel that long ago. Not to mention Jackson Wang was 12 at the time! I was — well, it’s not important how old I was.)

Anyway, this reminder prompted me to YouTube the dance number again (more on that later) which of course, led me down a mini rabbit hole. I haven’t watched SYTYCD in a long time, but there is a lot of nostalgia tied to the show, which launched just months after YouTube’s own debut in 2005. For years, my husband, sister-in-law, and I would watch it religiously. It was one of our summer rituals. We even saw them live when they went on tour.

While the ratings have, not surprisingly, declined after 16 seasons (the show is set to return this summer after a two-year pandemic hiatus), I don’t think it is an overstatement to say that SYTYCD has had an enormous impact on raising the bar for dance choreography in mainstream pop culture. As iconic as some of the early routines were in films about dance, compare most of the material that came out of the 1980s and 1990s with those that came after 2006 and you can see the evolution.

Dance Magazine wrote in 2017: “It’s undeniable that dance today is part of pop culture in a way that it wasn’t a decade and a half ago….The genesis of this trend can arguably be pointed back to SYTYCD.” The magazine noted at the time that the 13th season featured 159 dance numbers that were viewed 170 million times. And this wasn’t even at the height of the show’s popularity.

Alumni from the show regularly credit the series for bringing a new level of respect to dancers and for how it finally put the spotlight on artists who were previously relegated to the background.

Last year, a New York Times feature highlighted how the show opened doors for dancers and where some of the show’s alumni can be found now. Ariana DeBose from Season 6, for example, won an Academy Award for her role as Anita in the Steven Spielberg remake of “West Side Story”. Stephen “tWitch” Boss, a popular fan favourite from Season 4, has choreographed for K-Pop artists and started off as a guest DJ on The Ellen DeGeneres Show before he was promoted to Co-Executive Producer in 2020.

SYTYCD “is a natural springboard for dancers, but perhaps a more significant and enduring legacy is the platform it has provided for choreographers,” The New York Times wrote in another article from 2018. “Unless you were in the dance world, you didn’t even know the word ‘choreography,’” Mia Michaels, who won three Emmys for her work on the show, said in the Times article. “Choreographers became household names, which was incredible for our industry.”

So this brings me back to Jackson Wang’s video and a 16-year-old dance number from SYTYCD.

Who else remembers this groundbreaking zombie dance routine by choreographer Wade Robson, set to “Ramalama (Bang Bang)” by Irish singer-songwriter Roisin Murphy?

The costumes, mood, make-up, and style — even the expressive use of hands and arms — in “Blow” immediately brought the “Ramalama” number to mind, despite the obvious differences. The foot stomping in “Blow” at the 1:58 mark and later felt like echoes of the staccato steps of the dancers and their canes as they came down the stairs in “Ramalama.”

Like in “Blow”, elements of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” — such as the zombie twitching choreography — can also be found in “Ramalama”. The critically acclaimed number won an Emmy in 2007 for Outstanding Choreography, and is still considered one of the show’s best dance routines.

(I should note here that Wade Robson and Michael Jackson have a reportedly dark connection and history, as told in the documentary Leaving Neverland.)

Campos, the director for “Blow”, is a dancer and choreographer in his own right who has appeared in the web series The LXD (a.k.a. The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers) and the dance film Step Up 3D, both of which also featured SYTYCD alumni. He also directed music videos for Panic! at the Disco and was the assistant choreographer for The Greatest Showman. (He was also apparently the bartender in the background serving drinks to Hugh Jackson and Zac Efron during “The Other Side” number.) Given the style of the film, I’m curious if elements from The Greatest Showman were also a source of inspiration for “Blow”.

This isn’t the first time he and Wang have collaborated — Campos also directed the music videos for Wang’s “BULLET TO THE HEART” and “100 Ways”. Wang told Variety that his latest video was like a musical and is a teaser for his upcoming album, “Magic Man.”

I don’t watch a ton of music videos, so maybe there are better examples or comparisons out there, but for me, “Blow” is a production that demands and commands my attention from start to finish — and one that also brought back memories of an old beloved show.