LOS ANGELES – Standing together on the massive Kodak Theatre stage, the final two “So You Think You Can Dance” contestants had one thing in common.

“I told Brandon (Bryant), 'No matter what, Miami wins,'” Jeanine Mason said.
She promptly won the $250,000 top prize Thursday; he finished second. Both are from Miami; so is Janette Manrera, who finished in the top eight and was described by producer-judge Nigel Lythgoe as the season's best dancer.
Why the Miami dance power? You could credit the salsa spirit and maybe the weather. “The heat makes everyone want to dance,” Bryant said.
Or you could credit the ethnic rhythms. Despite her surname – “I'll have to ask my grandparents about that,” she said – Mason is first-generation Cuban-American.
Sent to dance school at age 3, she went along with it for a few years. At 7, she wavered. “I'd come home crying that I didn't want to do it anymore,” she said.
A couple years later, she “met two of the most amazing teachers in the world,” Mason, now 18, said.
All that training combined with a compact (5-foot-4) and athletic body and a show-business spirit. “She's such a crazy person,” Kayla Radomski, who finished fourth, said approvingly. “She's very open. She's loud.”
Mason isn't sure where she got that trait. “I watched a lot of Disney movies as a kid,” she said.
She's accustomed to being noticed. The exception came in the early “Dance” weeks. “Jeanine was under everyone's radar,” Lythgoe said.
Mason barely made it there. “I was the last person to audition in Miami, she said.
She drew little attention during the Las Vegas round or during the early weeks in Los Angeles. “She was never the biggest vote-getter,” said Adam Shankman, a key guest judge. “That didn't start until the last two or three weeks.”
Others drew attention early. Judges raved about the raw skill of Radomski. 18, and the charisma and work ethic of Evan Kasprzak, 22, who finished third; they had mixed feelings about Bryant, 20.
By the Las Vegas round, many judges were big on Bryant. Mia Michaels, who was choreographing a number there, disagreed.
“It was a little bit of the not-so-professional work quality about him that (upset) me,” Michaels recalled.
Looking back on that now, Bryant said he simply lacked confidence, because he was rejected in the Las Vegas round a year earlier. “When I went to Vegas this time, I really wasn't sure of myself.”
His confidence kept growing and he reached the final four. That's when he drew a break – the final number in the final performance show was a powerful duet with Mason, backed by a thunder-and-lightning mix of drumbeats and red lights.
Shankman's reaction was immediate. “I turned to Mary (fellow judge Mary Murphy) and said, 'That could have won them the show.'”
Prior to that, judges had been lukewarm about several of the numbers. They had come down harshly on Kazprzak, with the studio audience disagreeing. “I've never had anything like 3,000 people chanting my name,” he said.
He reached the final three, before being ousted, leaving the final two. Bryant recently moved to Salt Lake City; Monroe expects to enroll soon in UCLA. Both, however, have spent most of their lives in Miami, which is suddenly TV's dance capital.