Dance steps up for season finale

The curtain comes down on So You Think You Can Dance’s 10th anniversary season Tuesday. And while odds are that neither you nor the roughly 780,000 Canadians who have been tuning in each week will see the winner’s name again, let alone those of the other finalists, there’s something undeniably joyous, inspirational and life-affirming about one of TV’s most affecting talent competitions.

Whoever emerges in the spotlight at the end of So You Think You Can Dance Tuesday — the nameless ones who shall be named here are Aaron Turner, Jasmine Harper, Fik-Shun and season-long front-runner Amy Yakima — they got there based on grace, style, athleticism, sheer determination and true grit.

Dance creator and longtime executive-producer and judge Nigel Lythgoe offers a word of encouragement for those hundreds of thousands of Canadian Dance fans at home who might be upset that their chosen favourite isn’t the last man, or woman, standing at the end.

“Whoever we send home,” Lythgoe said, “we’re wrong, you know.” (8 p.m., Fox, CTV)

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A day after the U.S. Open Tennis Championships crowned a winner in women’s and men’s singles — barring weather delays — and just weeks shy of the 40th anniversary of the infamous Battle of the Sexes tennis match between Billie Jean King, then 29, and Bobby Riggs, then 55, PBS’s master-class biography program American Masters profiles the tennis icon formerly known as Billie Jean Moffitt, a woman who, more than anyone, battled sexism and carved an equal place for women in professional sport.

King was both instrumental in founding the Women’s Tennis Association and is an inspiration for countless girls and young women who choose professional athletics as a career. From Title IX to a lifetime of social activism off the court, King has truly been one of the greats.

For the record, King beats Riggs that day 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 — this, after Riggs had dismissed then-world women’s champion Margaret Court in straight sets. Now you know. (8 p.m., WTVS)