Geisha Chin admitted she’s not a morning person, but as one of the top 16 contenders on So You Think You Can Dance Canada (SYTYCDC), she’s had to change her ways.

“We usually have call times at six to seven in the morning,” said the 19-year-old Carleton student.

But Chin is neither a stranger to SYTYCDC, nor to hard work, having made to finals week last year but being cut before the televised portion of the show.

Chin said judge Jean-Marc Généreux offered her sound advice before leaving last year.

“[He told me to] take some time to train outside [my] genre, and then [I’ll] be unstoppable,” she said.

After being cut from the finals last year, Chin said she dabbled in other genres, having mostly been trained in ballet and contemporary.

She said she studied ballroom from YouTube videos and hip-hop, in preparation for this year. She listed dance beatboxing and krumping as her favourite dance moves.

Chin said she practiced for hours a day, attended and taught classes, all while juggling her own classes as a third-year neuroscience student, not to mention her social life.

“I would have late night classes and then go to Tory Building, go to one of the classrooms and dance until two in the morning,” she said. “It was usually by myself, and maybe the janitors.”

Having breezed through season four’s auditions with rave reviews from the judges, Chin said taking the year to mature was definitely an asset.

“Mentally, I was a lot more prepared for what I was going to do,” she said. “Physically, I trained a lot harder, and I was taking more classes.”

Now, several weeks through the show, Chin said she has already overcome a major hurdle — sitting in the bottom three.

“It was terrible and I hated it,” she said. “The judges told [the bottom three] to pick it up a little bit.”

Nevertheless, Chin said she is overwhelmed by the support she gets on the show.

“I’d never in a million years think I was going to get here,” she said. “Every time I get on stage I think ‘wow, this is actually happening.’ ”

Chin said she’s unsure whether she’ll immediately come back to school.

“Dance is something I want to do right now,” she said. “School will always be there.”