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Fun Facts About Each of the Top 10 Finalists for Season 6 of AMERICA'S GOT TALENT

Mike Vicic - September 6, 2011

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Tonight at 9pm ET on NBC, the Top Ten acts on AMERICA'S GOT TALENT perform live in Hollywood for a chance at the AGT Final Four. Can't decide who to vote for? Well, we have the real scoop about each competitor -- their favorite things in life, their inspirations and their aspirations. Read about each act, and then go vote -- by phone, text and online -- between 10:55pm ET/PT and 1am ET/PT tonight. Make sure your fave gets to the Finals!

 

 

 

 

 

 


West Springfield Dance Team
   
Photo Credit: Trae Patton/NBC

1. This dance troupe is obsessed with the "wop" dance.


2. At any given moment, you can find the group competing for the highest score in the "Fruit Ninja" app, with a current high of 586.


3. Coach-choreographer Tara Perez is a math teacher and part-time dancer who volunteers as a dance coach because she loves dancing so much.


4. Their other coach, Jason King -- who is also known as BuhBuhJuh (oh yah!), like Bboy Jason -- is a professional auto mechanic who also volunteers to coach the dance team.


5. Everywhere they go, the team likes to carry two teddy bears, "B-bear" (Jason) and "T-bear" (Tara), that represent their coaches.



Landon Swank
   
Photo Credit: Lewis Jacobs/NBC

1. Magician Landon got hooked on illusionism at age 7 after seeing a Harry Blackstone Jr. show in Anchorage.


2. Landon has played soccer since he was three and always wanted to be a pro soccer player if he didn't make it as a magician. Bonus fact: His favorite soccer teams are Manchester United and Real Madrid.


3. Landon got engaged in March to Harmony Moniz, a beautiful singer-model, and they will marry on 11-11-11 in Hawaii.


4. Landon's father, Greg, is a welder and an engineer who put in 13-15 hours a day to help Landon with his last performance.


5. Xtreme Metalworks in Las Vegas does all the welding and metal work for his magic acts, and Acrylic Tank Manufacturing (from Animal Planet's TANKED) makes his acrylics, like the acrylic water tank.



Anna Graceman
   
Photo Credit: Trae Patton/NBC

1. Singer Anna found the inspiration for her song "SuperStar" from seeing the movie THIS IS IT, right after Michael Jackson's passing, and then watching AGT last year. Michael's career struck an inspirational chord.


2. The celebrity that left her speechless when she met her? Taylor Swift.


3. Alicia Keyes, The Beatles and Elton John are three of her favorite inspirations. Bonus fact: Anna likes inspiring kids her age and showing them if you work hard enough and try hard enough, the sky is the limit.


4. She loves fantasy and mythical books such as "Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief" and the entire "Harry Potter" series.


5. Even though she was born in Alaska, she hates sushi. She says "I only like cooked fish."



Landau Eugene Murphy, Jr.
   
Photo Credit: Lewis Jacobs/NBC

1. Every year, big-band singer Landau writes, produces and acts in his local church's Christmas play, and sometimes leads music for worship services.


2. He's been on the front page of 11 newspapers, and was named hometown hero and Ambassador of Fine Arts in Logan County, West Virginia.


3. Landau has always loved playing basketball, and Michael Jordan is his hero because of the way he played the game: honest and fair with an ability to inspire the team to play better without saying a word.


4. He has been cutting hair since he was a kid, and would love to own a barbershop one day. Bonus fact: Landau talked his mom into buying him a hair clipping set from the Fingerhut catalog, and he first learned on a blind man ("looks just like Stevie Wonder, I swear!") who paid him $1 every week to cut his hair.


5. His friends call him "Doonietoons."



Miami All-Stars
   
Photo Credit: Trae Patton/NBC

1. The 24-member dance team range in age from 13-23 and are comprised of "lots of boyfriends and girlfriends."  Bonus fact: 22 of the 24 Miami All-Stars dancers speak Spanish.


2. Chilean-born Manny Castro, the husband of the husband-and-wife choreographers of the Miami All-Stars, has such a thick accent that his wife Lory serves as the official translator for Howie Mandel.


3. Manny initially took up street dancing to Michael Jackson tunes in his Chilean hometown, but once he moved to America in 1992 and discovered ballet, his real journey to becoming a pro dancer began.


4. Manny's 10-year-old son, D'Angelo Castro, and his dance partner Amanda Carbajales won $500,000 in Paula Abdul's LIVE TO DANCE. "The pressure's on for sure now. I'm his dad, I gotta win!" says Manny.


5. The group gathers all AGT contestants in a prayer circle before all tapings they participate in.



Lys Agnes
   
Photo Credit: Trae Patton/NBC

1. Opera singer Lys has always been very shy, but she has wanted to be a professional singer since she was three-years-old. Bonus fact: Her first public singing gig was the national anthem at her high school.


2. She auditioned in Seattle twice and then again in Minneapolis before she got selected for AGT.


3. Lys is an avid runner, especially trail running in Denver, and loves snowboarding. Whenever she is on the West Coast, she likes to surf.


4. A lot of people wonder about her ethnicity. Lys is Arawak (originally peoples of the West Indies), Bahamian, Danish, and Japanese.


5. Since her recent AGT fame, one Denver mom posted a note about her ailing child who wants to meet Lys. Lys said she gets lots of notes, and hopes to grant the woman's wish when she goes home.



Smage Bros. Riding Shows
   
Photo Credit: Lewis Jacobs/NBC

1. Phil, 26, is a pro snow skater in the winter for Ambition Snow skates. Bonus fact: Phil has three Guinness World Records, including the most consecutive kick flips (14) on a snow skate board.


2. Pat, 21, is a four-time US National Moto Trials Champion.


3. Every family member is extreme. Their father was an amateur motorcycle racer, and he met their mother, who also rides, at a motocross event. Their 80-something grandmother still rides a 4-wheeler.


4. Even their goats do tricks!  Burwill is known as the fainting goat, but the real trick athlete is Karl who flips, spins, snow skates, jumps and runs.


5. A few weeks ago, Phil was practicing a new trick for this performance and he crashed. His bike landed on top of him and he injured his arm, cutting into their rehearsal time.



Silhouettes
   
Photo Credit: Lewis Jacobs/NBC

1. The Silhouettes are a 42-member dance troupe (ages 3 to 23), and are the largest group in the Final 10. Bonus fact: All of the students must have at least a 3.0 GPA to be eligible, but most get straight A's.


2. If you see a Silhouette doing pushups, it's because they were not listening to Miss Lynne, their coach.


3. All of the Silhouettes train 19 hours a week and rehearse nine hours a week. Since the quarterfinals, they've rehearsed almost 200 hours!


4. Two Silhouettes live with extreme medical conditions: team captain Kelsie thrives on the team despite living with Cystic Fibrosis and little Ellie has Wolframs Syndrome, an extremely rare genetic disorder.


5. The Silhouettes wear wings to remind them of all the good in the world, and to create a safe place where they can let loose and dance.



Team iLuminate
   
Photo Credit: Trae Patton/NBC

1. In Team iLuminate, they have two poppers, two boys, two contemporary dancers, two freestyle dancers and two choreographers.


2. Miral, the creator of Team iLuminate, had always wanted to be a dancer, but her parents pushed her to get an education. Rather than pursue a career in dance, she attended college and studied computer technology and design.


3. Before they perform, Team iLuminate gets together and yells "LET THERE BE LIGHT"!


4. Most of Team iLuminate are fascinated with planking.


5. Quick personal facts about Team iLuminate members: Jay Smooth and JRock used to be rivals. Craig DJs at night. Spee-d and Giselle's sons both have the same birthday (August 2nd).



Poplyfe
   
Photo Credit: Trae Patton/NBC

1. The entire teen band, except for Dillon, went to Oakland Arts School together in Oakland, California.


2. Dylan, 15, and his brother Jaden, 13, are sons of D-Wayne, the lead vocalist of Tony! Toni! Toné!, the platinum-selling Oakland R&B group.


3. The first song Poplyfe played together as a complete band was "American Boy" by Estelle in 2009. Bonus fact: Before Dillon joined them, the first song was "If I Were a Boy" by Beyonce.


4. Jaden loves pandas because they are black and white and they are together.


5. KehLani, whose nickname is "Kuala," studied conga drums based on lessons taught by one of her favorite uncles who passed away.



Ten Facts About Producing AGT
   
Photo Credit: Lewis Jacobs/NBC

1. For each audition held outside of Hollywood, a crew of at least two hundred is required to get people into auditions, an audience into theaters, and anything and everything else needed for a show.


2. In the audition portion of the show, three 18 wheelers and one 52-foot truck are needed to get the production equipment around the USA.


3. For a live show, there are typically 50 crew members to help with set changes, including carpenters, riggers, and prop persons.


4. Once an act has decided on what they are going to do for their performance, they along with the crew have two to three days to have all prop pieces and set pieces ready for full rehearsals.


5. There are twenty departments at AGT! Those include wardrobe, hair, makeup, contestants, producers, host, judges, music, art, production, travel, security, stage management, directors, and camera, audio, lighting, grips, and carpenters.

 

6. The AGT stage can hold an audience of 525 people. Besides the chairs in the theatre, over 150 chairs are on site for contestants, producers, and other AGT personnel.


7. On the set of AGT, over 500 AA batteries are used a week! These are most commonly used for microphones and walkie talkies.


8. There are at least eleven backup dancers needed for a live AGT broadcast.


9. The biggest performances that had to be accommodated for this season were The Kinetic King (who occupied 36 hours of prep and the entire stage!), Fearless Flores Family (whose globe required the entire crew of fifty to assemble), and Professor Splash (whose performance was so large, it was held outside!).


10. Because live shows are on Tuesday and Wednesday, the AGT crew usually takes their weekend days on Friday or Saturday. However, there are always crews working seven days a week.


Special thanks to FremantleMedia PR for providing this content exclusively to TV Tango.