When "So You Think You Can Dance" returns to Fox on May 24 (at 8 p.m. EST), the popular competition series will look wildly different than seasons past.
"We're one show now, so we've got an action-packed show," producer Nigel Lythgoe told ET at the Fox upfronts this week. Fox ended the "So You Think You can Dance" results-show broadcast, meaning many changes needed to be made before the new season.
"This year we're doing an entirely new thing that we should have done years ago," Lythgoe said enthusiastically. "We're going to have a male winner and a female winner. With changing it around, to making it just one show, we sort of realized, 'Hey, why don't we do this?' We wanted to do it, now we have the opportunity to do so."
As Lythgoe told TVLine.com, “Girls dance totally differently than guys."
To make up for the lack of a results show, "SYTYCD" will have all its dancers perform in episodes one and two before revealing who goes home. "We'll watch them dance in the first week," Lythgoe told ET. "America will vote. We'll watch them dance in the second week, take into account America's vote and the week before's routine and make a decision."
Lythgoe said to TVLine.com that the dancers won't know before their routines if they're in danger because “we don’t want the [at-risk] contestants to be panicking [when they dance]."
As for the celebrity judges, Lythgoe would love to see Kristin Chenoweth and Jesse Tyler Ferguson return for season 9.
For more on the new rules and format of "So You Think You Can Dance," head over to TVLine.com.