Joshua Allen who won season 4 of So You Think You Can Dance – has passed away at 36.
The professional dancer from Fort Worth, Texas died on Tuesday, September 30 as a family member has declined to comment to TMZ how he passed.
That same family member of Joshua Allen asked fans for ‘privacy and prayers.’
Friend of the late dancer Emmanuel Hurd told the publication that he was ‘a very honest, real person.’
Hurd continued to TMZ: ‘He didn’t always do things the way that everybody thought he should, but that’s why he was a winner.
He is best known for winning the reality dancing competition show in 2008.
Joshua Allen actually won over Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss who was runner up on the show and they became good friends
Boss – who went on to become DJ and executive producer of The Ellen DeGeneres Show – died by suicide at age 40 in December 2022.
Of their relationship at the time Allen commented: ‘We were really happy for each other. We were two of the closest people there.’
Allen originally auditioned for SYTYCD in Dallas, Texas along with his friend and fellow contestant, Comfort Fedoke.
He ultimately was crowned on August 7, 2008 and earned the cash prize of $250,000.
After he earned the victory, he revealed at that he actually had no technical dance training as a kid but did work on a few things before his audition.
Allen told Entertainment Weekly: ‘I took a few modern dance classes, ballet classes, because I felt that to be a better dancer I would have to take different classes, and expand my horizons in the art of dance.
‘I didn’t want to audition for the show not knowing anything.’
After nailing his audition, there were months before he moved to Las Vegas ahead of the live shows so he strategically spent that time taking ‘as many classes as I could’ which certainly paid off.
He said: ‘I really wasn’t that technically trained. I would just try to take classes in the summer, and when it was school time I would take class, run track, play football.
‘I would always just train in the summer. So it was never hard training.’
He did find success on the big screen after his SYTYCD win as he was a featured dancer in 2010 flick Step Up 3D in addition to the Footloose remake in 2011.
He also took part as a dancer and choreographer in Oxygen’s Dance Your Ass Off back in 2010 and even had acting roles on television shows Community and American Horror Story.
Allen made headlines again in 2016 for a domestic violence arrest involving an ex-girlfriend.
He was ultimately sentenced to one year in jail after pleading no contest to the charges and received five years probation in addition to one year of domestic violence counseling according to Deadline.
Allen’s final Instagram post was a tribute post to The Cosby Show star Malcolm Jamal Warner who passed away in July at the age of 54.