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"  When Fox&amp;#039;s So You Think You Can Dance was born in 2005, audiences couldn&amp;#039;t get enough of the ingenious formula\u2014pool together the country&amp;#039;s finest pop-and-lockers, contempos, and ballroom diehards and force them to learn an expert routine from another style of dance in a week or be voted off. Think Project Runway meets Fame. That would make choreographer and judge Mia Michaels this decade&amp;#039;s Debbie Allen, only instead of pounding out counts with a stick, she delivers the show&amp;#039;s priceless one-liners (&amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t be a needy dancer!&amp;quot;) and the most transfixing routines (who can forget the Emmy Award\u2013winning &amp;quot;Calling You&amp;quot;\u2014 a love story choreographed around a park bench?). But SYTYCD isn&amp;#039;t her only gig. Michaels, a Florida-born &amp;quot;studio kid&amp;quot; whose father was a tap, jazz, and ballet instructor, choreographed Cirque du Soleil Delirium (as well as Celine Dion&amp;#039;s Vegas extravaganza, A New Day). This month, she returns for the show&amp;#039;s fourth season and tells us all about her non-dancer&amp;#039;s body and why &amp;quot;Mia movement&amp;quot; makes us want to pull on our leg-warmers.  ELLE: I have two left feet and yet I&amp;#039;m hooked on this show. Why is that?  MIA MICHAELS: Dance is so universal. I remember growing up and watching Rocky and Ice Castles and loving those movies because it was like watching superheroes. It was humans at their highest potential. That&amp;#039;s how I feel dancers are, and that&amp;#039;s why America loves to watch, because it has that feeling of determination. ELLE: Some of your routines are incredibly...weird, but emotionally stirring. How do you describe your style? MM: I love the untrained eye because the untrained eye is the most honest, so when you say that, it&amp;#039;s exactly right on. I have the title of contemporary but I don&amp;#039;t really know what to call it. I think it&amp;#039;s just &amp;quot;Mia movement,&amp;quot; because it&amp;#039;s coming from within. ELLE: Is it as tough as it seems teaching dancers who aren&amp;#039;t classically trained? MM: Sometimes it&amp;#039;s inspiring. But sometimes they&amp;#039;re so limited that they&amp;#039;re not an instrument for you. You can only do so much. [This season] I&amp;#039;m really going to hide their weaknesses and try to pull out their strengths. And that&amp;#039;s sometimes hard. I had a time with it last season with one of the dancers, and I could not get him\u2014 ELLE: Was it Cedric Gardner, the breaker? MM: Yeah. That was a hard one for me. He couldn&amp;#039;t do any kind of step-touch\u2014I mean, basic. He was a brilliant improv guy, and I was excited about working with him. Then I got him into the studio and he couldn&amp;#039;t retain material. He&amp;#039;s actually studying at the Debbie Allen Dance Academy now. ELLE: You don&amp;#039;t have the typical dancer&amp;#039;s body\u2014reed-thin and tall. MM: It&amp;#039;s actually why I became a choreographer. I had grown up dancing in my dad&amp;#039;s dance studio\u2014I was a total studio kid. By the time I was in my teens, I was a really strong dancer. Very athletic body. And I got older and I&amp;#039;ve always struggled with my weight. I couldn&amp;#039;t get a job because of my thicker body, and eventually I was, like, Well, fine, I&amp;#039;ll make my own dance then. I think it was a blessing in a way, because I wouldn&amp;#039;t be where I am as an artist if I was given a tiny, thin little sinewy body. ELLE: Do you consider yourself the bad cop judge? Like Simon Cowell? MM: I am very honest but I try to deliver it with love. Sometimes, though, I don&amp;#039;t. I find it really obnoxious when someone comes across as arrogant or really cocky. I have a heart attack and I go for the jugular. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/movies-tv/a9265/she-wants-to-move-19684/>