So You Think You Can Dance Star Serge Onik Dead at 33
Serge Onik, a dancer and choreographer who participated in Fox’s So You Think You Can Dance season 11, died at the age of 33. However, the cause of his death is still unknown.
In a statement to E! News and EW, Onik’s representative and president of The Movement Talent Agency, Jim Keith, confirmed his death.
The statement said, “He was an amazing dancer with a huge heart and he touched the lives of everyone who met him.”
Onik was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and moved to the United States when he was three years old.
He began dancing at the age of nine as part of a Russian cultural program in which he was taught language, culture, and dances, all of which he had to perform on stage.
Three years later, he became a competitor in the ballroom dance craze in which he immersed himself for 18 years.
In an interview on YouTube in 2014, Onik revealed to a young journalist, “What inspired me to dance was the beauty, the energy, and the ability to be creative with your body.”
In the same year, Onik competed in season 11 of So You Think You Can Dance and worked as a choreographer on Dancing With The Stars, where he work together with Meryl Davis and Maks Chmerkovskiy.
As a dancer in Sway: A Dance Trilogy, he reconnected with several of the pro dancers from the successful ABC dance competition series, including Chmerkovskiy, Peta Murgatroyd, Sharna Burgess, and Artem Chigvintsev.
Elena Grinenko, his longtime friend, lamented Onik’s death on social media with a photo of the two as kids.
She captioned the image: “RIP @sergeonik, We going to miss you,” “I’m so sad that world lost such an amazing person like you.”
Fans and dancers have expressed shocked reactions in the comments section.
Tony Dovolani commented “Wow. This is unbelievable,” and Anna Rebunskaya, “I’m so so sad about this. RIP Serg.”
In Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights, Onik made a brief appearance, which he reflected on Instagram.
He wrote, “I mean it’s for literally 2 seconds but I’ve never been more honored to be part of a project,” “It’s such a privilege to be part of a movie that represents the cultures and peoples and dance genre that basically raised me and I owe my whole everything to.”
