On Friday, the latest eliminated dancers from “So You Think You Can Dance,” Phillip Chbeeb and Caitlin Kinney, chatted on a conference call with journalists about their experiences on the show and more. Here are a few excerpts:

Phillip Chbeeb on engineering and school: Engineering, the major itself, is so stressful that I really needed an outlet of some sort and I feel like dance has provided that easily whenever engineering gets too stressful. But at the same time, it held me in my dance because my dance was more mathematical-minded than human emotion-driven. So it’s been a really interesting relationship between the science and the dancing.

I’m taking a little bit of time off [from school] and surprisingly, this worked out perfectly because I was going through a lot of money issues before the show happened. It’s amazing how things work out. It’s a blessing. The minute money problems got in the way of my college education, I got on the show and get on tour. So I’m definitely, hopefully going to save up with this tour and I’ll be back in school within a semester of that, well, whenever the tour ends, so that will be great. I’ve already seen my school and they’re excited to have me back.

On what’s next: I just got cut but I’m going back to Houston and I’m going to start choreographing, because that’s truly my passion, is choreography. So I’ll be doing that and then hopefully in a year or two you’ll see me choreographing for the show and at the same time I’ll be following my physics ambitions.

Caitlin Kinney on when the judges questioned her chemistry with partner Jason Glover: I think Jason and I always struggled when they said that to us because we’re thinking, “My God, with all the couples, we really bonded as friends.” We hung out probably the most of any other couples, and I think we did have great chemistry. I think my boyfriend was probably thrilled that they kept saying they see no chemistry. But I don’t know what the deal was with that. I don’t know. It’s not something we really.… At some point you’re like, “Oh my God. We’re putting our heart and soul into this. We’re in it together. We’re doing it together.” And you can only do so much. They either see it or they don’t.

With the Bollywood routine; obviously we had to kiss at the end. So it started off with such a bang that there really was nowhere to go from there. There wasn’t any growing on the chemistry. It was always expected to be so intense and so emotional, whereas some of the pieces didn’t really call for that. The alien piece, you weren’t supposed to have any sort of lovey-dovey chemistry, that’s for sure. But I think Jason and I are great friends. I just had a wonderful time working with him. We got along so well. I wouldn’t have had any other partner.

– Claire Zulkey | LA Times

(art: FOX)