In last night's HSM SA Results Show it was Courtney, Melissa, Steven and Jarryd who didn’t survive the votes and left the show, leaving behind 10 hopefuls.
There was an extra buzz in the air at the start of the episode because voting continued right up until the start of the show for the first time. As host Dalen Lance opened the episode with a recap of Saturday’s show, the final results were being tallied by the auditing firm Alexander Forbes.
While the results came in, radio jocks made their predictions. Algoa fm’s Carol-Ann Kelleher said Lyle and Tsephi would be going home, and Stacey Norman from Kfm also thought it would be Lyle. Jacaranda’s Martin Bester predicted bad news for Lyle, Tsephi, David and Lorri.
Back on stage, the Alexander Forbes representative handed the voting results to Dalen on stage, and at the same time a copy was handed to Producer Pieter Toerien at the judges’ table in the Theatre On the Bay auditorium.
Courtney, Melissa, Tsephi, Steven, Daniel and Jarryd sang for their lives while Pieter Toerien watched on to make the final decision.
But first a taped segment of the Top 14’s visit to a Red Cross Hospital last week changed the focus a little bit. “It puts things in perspective,” said a visibly moved Lorri.
The six performers under threat sang songs from the High School Musical movie: “What I’ve Been Looking For” for the boys and “When There Was Me And You” for the boys.
And then it was time. Pieter Toerien explained that Steven has perhaps been having “too much fun” and didn’t work hard enough, and that Jarryd was still very young, so he chose to save Daniel.
Of the girls, he said, he and Hazel Feldman would have been very happy with any one of them in the lead of their stage production and chose to keep Tsephi.
As always, the show ended with a group performance of Start Of Something New, featuring lead vocals from the four performers for whom the journey had just ended.
The remaining Top 10 are now off to start rehearsing for Saturday’s show, which will test their dancing skills to the maximum.