The format screwed Emma
by making all the kids dance in their styles made sure Emma never had a "wow" moment. She is actually versatile in other styles.
Kida won because hip hop is fun and he got a great routine every week.
And yet Gaby won over an entire group of street dancers, just last year.
In the kingdom of the blind, you're the village idiot.
You forget that Gaby wasn't dancing tap every other week. She danced two professionally choreographed tap routines the entire season. She had ample opportunity to make her mark in other styles.
I disagree with the OP, though. Emma wasn't screwed by the format, she was screwed by her choreographers. Tap can be story-based and interpersonal, but you need choreographers who are willing to go there.
Check this out, starting from 2:00 to see what story-based, partnering tap looks like (the sequence begins with some sub-par singing):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISwkiy7u7no
"You two ought to be ashamed of yourselves . . . two grown men acting like . . . grown men!!!"
I'm well aware that Gaby didn't dance tap every week. I merely wanted to point out that a tapper had won just the year before. The fact is Emma won over several street dancers, and made it to the top 4. The fact that she didn't win had more to do with personality than style.
In the kingdom of the blind, you're the village idiot.
The OP didn't say that Emma was screwed because she was a tapper, she said that she was screwed by the format, which forced her, as a tapper, to dance an endless succession of purely technical tap routines, while Kida had fun, memorable hip hop routines, and JT and Tate had story-based contemporary routines. I happen to agree with her in this. While I feel that Tahani was better than Emma, Emma was decisively better than JT, whose technique was very weak, and Tate, whose expression was non-existent to start out with and poor toward the end. Emma loses points with me in comparison to Kida because she was never asked to do ballroom at any point, so I can't judge her on that.
"You two ought to be ashamed of yourselves . . . two grown men acting like . . . grown men!!!"