Stephen Boss, a dancer and reality television star known as tWitch, passed away at the age of 40

Stephen Boss, a charismatic hip-hop dancer and television personality known as tWitch, passed away on Tuesday in a motel room in Los Angeles. Boss rose to fame on the reality show “So You Think You Can Dance” before becoming a regular on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” Boss was found unresponsive in the room. He was 40.

The cause of death was determined to be a suicide by the office of the medical examiner for Los Angeles County.

Popping is a dance style associated with hip-hop that involves isolating parts of the body with a staccato rhythm. Mr. Boss joined “So You Think You Can Dance” in 2008 when he was 25 years old. He had a talent for popping, which involves isolating parts of the body with a staccato rhythm, and he had the ability to make the judges burst into laughter with his facial expressions and theatrics.

Soon after, he found himself performing on national television in foreign dance forms like as the waltz and the tango, and he ended the fourth season of the competition in second place. Later on in the show, Mr. Boss and Ellen DeGeneres collaborated on a hip-hop duet, in which he portrayed a therapist wearing a sweater vest, and she played the role of his client. This performance would go on to have a significant impact on the remainder of Mr. Boss’s career.

Mr. Boss, a cheerful presence on TV who loved to wear a fedora and frequently burst into dancing, worked for “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” for over a decade as a D.J., guest host, and finally as an executive producer. He was known for his fondness of the fedora and his tendency to dance. Ms. DeGeneres stated such words on one of the last episodes of the programme, which aired this year, saying, “I depend on him to glance over at and make goofy jokes.” “He’s not only my friend; he’s my right-hand man.”

Ms. DeGeneres expressed her “heartbreak” at the passing of Mr. Boss in a statement that she released on Wednesday. She referred to him as “pure love and light.”

Connie Boss Alexander and Sandford Rose welcomed their son Stephen Laurel Boss into the world on September 29th, 1982 in Montgomery, Alabama. He began dancing when he was a teenager and got the moniker “twitch” because he was always moving about, even while he was in school or at church.

In 2014, Mr. Boss said in an interview with the website Collider that “dance forms a lot of the discussion that I have.” “Even though I’m not a ridiculous wordsmith and there are times when I can’t clearly verbalise the things that I’m feeling, I’d say that I can emote how I feel by dancing, and I can do so fearlessly one hundred percent of the time,” she said. “It’s a form of expression that I have complete control over.”

In addition to his more traditional dance training at Chapman University in Orange, California, Mr. Boss had already competed on “Star Search” and the MTV show “The Wade Robson Project” by the time he made it onto “So You Think You Can Dance.” In addition, Mr. Boss had already competed on “Star Search” in the past.

In interviews, he said that he intended to enlist in the Navy if he were not selected for the dancing competition “So You Think You Can Dance.” But the programme took a like to him, and for years thereafter he would appear on the show both to judge and to participate in dancing competitions with fresh entrants.

The reality programme was also responsible for the beginning of Mr. Boss’s marriage. They became inseparable when the modern dancer Allison Holker, who had danced during Season 2, introduced herself to them at a party held at the conclusion of a subsequent season.

According to what Ms. Holker Boss said in an interview with People magazine earlier this year, the two of them “danced and we were together, like holding hands the very next day,” and they “never looked back.”

Mr. Boss popped the question when the pair was in the middle of recording choreography for a Microsoft commercial, and the resulting dance, which was subsequently made into a love duet and shared online. Dance was often at the core of their relationship. They tied the knot in 2013 and quickly gained a big following on social media by presenting a reality television programme, releasing dancing videos, and providing glimpses into their lives as parents raising a family.

In a statement, Ms. Holker Boss said that “Stephen lit up every room he went into.” “He put his family, friends, and community ahead of anything else in his life, and he believed that leading with love and light was the most important thing.”

Mr. Boss is survived by a number of members of his family, including his wife, his parents, a son named Maddox, a daughter named Zaia, a stepdaughter named Weslie, a brother named Deondre Rose, a grandpa named Eddy Boss, and two grandmothers named Elnora Rose and Marie Boss.

Following his rise to stardom as a dancer, Mr. Boss considered pursuing a career in acting. He made appearances in movies belonging to the “Step Up” series as well as the second “Magic Mike” film.

During an interview on “The Today Program,” Mr. Boss referred to his return to “So You Think You Can Dance” as a judge as a “full-circle moment,” citing the fact that Ms. DeGeneres’s show is coming to an end this year after 19 seasons. After that, he proceeded to demonstrate his charisma on the talk programme by teaching the hosts how to dance the robot, popping and locking, and salsa.