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Stephen Boss, a charismatic hip-hop dancer and television personality known as tWitch who rose to fame on the reality show \u201cSo You Think You Can Dance\u201d before becoming a regular on \u201cThe Ellen DeGeneres Show,\u201d died on Tuesday in a motel room in Los Angeles. He was 40.<\/p>
The death was ruled a suicide by the Los Angeles County medical examiner\u2019s office.<\/p>
Mr. Boss joined \u201cSo You Think You Can Dance\u201d in 2008 as a 25-year-old with a talent for popping \u2014 a dance form associated with hip-hop that involves isolating parts of the body with a staccato rhythm \u2014 and an ability to make the judges burst into laughter with his facial expressions and theatrics.<\/p>
He soon found himself dancing unfamiliar styles like the waltz and the tango on national television, and he finished the show\u2019s fourth season as runner-up. Later on in the series, Mr. Boss performed a hip-hop duet<\/a> with Ellen DeGeneres \u2014 featuring him as a therapist in a sweater vest and her as his client \u2014 that would end up shaping the rest of his career.<\/p> As a bubbly presence on TV who liked to wear a fedora and often broke into dance, Mr. Boss spent nearly a decade with \u201cThe Ellen DeGeneres Show\u201d as D.J., guest host and, eventually, an executive producer. \u201cI count on him to look over at and make silly jokes,\u201d Ms. DeGeneres said in an episode this year,<\/a> the show\u2019s last. \u201cHe\u2019s my pal, he\u2019s my sidekick.\u201d<\/p> In a statement on Wednesday, Ms. DeGeneres said she was \u201cheartbroken\u201d over the death, calling Mr. Boss \u201cpure love and light.\u201d<\/p> Stephen Laurel Boss was born on Sept. 29, 1982, in Montgomery, Ala., to Connie Boss Alexander and Sandford Rose. He started dancing as a teenager and earned the nickname tWitch because he could not stop moving in school or in church.<\/p> \u201cDance constitutes a lot of the conversation that I have,\u201d Mr. Boss told the website Collider in 2014<\/a>. \u201cWhile I\u2019m not a ridiculous wordsmith and I can\u2019t clearly verbalize the things that I\u2019m feeling sometimes, I\u2019d say that I can emote how I feel by dancing, 100 percent of the time, and fearlessly at that.\u201d<\/p> By the time Mr. Boss made it onto \u201cSo You Think You Can Dance,\u201d he had already competed on \u201cStar Search\u201d and the MTV show \u201cThe Wade Robson Project,\u201d in addition to more traditional dance training at Chapman University in Orange, Calif.<\/p> If he had not been chosen for \u201cSo You Think You Can Dance,\u201d he said in interviews, he planned to join the Navy. But the show embraced him, and for years he would return to dance with new contestants and serve as a judge.<\/p> Mr. Boss\u2019s marriage also had its origins on the reality show. After dancing with Allison Holker \u2014 a contemporary dancer who had performed on Season 2 \u2014 at a party at the end of a later season, they became inseparable.<\/p> \u201cWe danced and we were together, like holding hands the very next day, and never looked back,\u201d Ms. Holker Boss told People magazine<\/a> this year.<\/p> Dance was often at the center of their relationship: Mr. Boss proposed while the couple were filming choreography for a Microsoft commercial, and the dance \u2014 later posted online<\/a> \u2014 turned into a romantic duet. They married in 2013 and built a significant social media following, hosting a reality TV show<\/a> and posting both dance videos and peeks into their life raising a family.<\/p> \u201cStephen lit up every room he stepped into,\u201d Ms. Holker Boss said in a statement. \u201cHe valued family, friends and community above all else, and leading with love and light was everything to him.\u201d<\/p> In addition to his wife and his parents, Mr. Boss is survived by a son, Maddox; a daughter, Zaia; a stepdaughter, Weslie; a brother, Deondre Rose; a grandfather, Eddy Boss; and two grandmothers, Elnora Rose and Marie Boss.<\/p> After finding fame as a dancer, Mr. Boss explored an acting career. He appeared in films in the \u201cStep Up\u201d franchise and in the second \u201cMagic Mike\u201d movie. (In his role as Ms. DeGeneres\u2019s sidekick, he had his body hair waxed<\/a> on her show in preparation for \u201cMagic Mike XXL.\u201d)<\/p>