AUGUST WITH JET

Dear DanceLife diary,
I’ve taken a step back from teaching my casual evening classes at UDC for the moment and am only teaching our fulltime students as my schedule has been crazy busy; and my belly is getting bigger by the minute (growing a lil baby girl – due 8 Oct)
After producing a successful SOLD OUT show for Urban Dance Centre’s Midyear Showcase at Nida, I took our performance crew’s, Urban Dance Project and Urban Youth Project to Sydney Eisteddfod taking 1st and 2nd place in the Hip Hop sections. I’m so proud of all our hard working and passionate students who I believe are being educated correctly with detail and are a strong force in the upcoming dance industry in both Australia and overseas.
I choreographed a corporate gig for Flight Centre that was held at Darling Harbour Convention Centre. It was a themed event to ‘FAME’ and I had the gorgeous Prinnie (Aus Idol) singing live, 6 of the ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ dancers Jess S, Jess H, Ivy, Phillipe, Heath and Matt. It was a huge night with fireworks and the events ‘big wigs’ going Gaga over the dancers.
I then collaborated with Will Centurion (the Argentinean Tango dancer from SYTYCD and now in West Side Story) for Nikki Bennett and Diva Corp Productions. A 20 minute Tango show created for a Censis corporate event touring around 5 cities in Australia. The show is a hot, fierce and passionate show featuring 3 dancers who fight throughout in a lustful love triangle. We held an audition at UDC and saw about 100 dancers and they definitely made it a hard job for Will, Nikki and I to cast. We were all looking for specific things eg. tango and partnering skills, performance quality and that Tango passion and strong commercial jazz technique. Finally after a long day of culling we cast the show with some amazing dancers. The cast consisted of Prinnie who was the Diva singer, Marcelo the accordion player and 8 HOT Tango/Commercial dancers. The show opened in Melbourne and will continue around Australia till Dec.
Then off to the Ivy to perform at the Foxtel’s presentation launch for the new TV show ‘Got To Dance’. A TV show dance competition like no other created in the UK. Unlike ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ you audition in your specialty of dance and don’t need to do different genres. It’s open to all ages; from solo’s to duo’s to big groups and crews. The performance I choreographed for the Foxtel team was to give them a live element of some of what they could expect to see on the upcoming Australian version of the show. A real mixed bag of dancers consisting of my dad – A true vaudevillian – ‘Aurel Verne’ as a tapper which is a real honour to feature him on the gig, a beautiful ballerina on pointe, a sassy ballroom couple and ofcourse a Hip Hop Crew from UDC including 2 of the cutest Hip Hop kids you’d ever seen. It was a big finale of the night and hyped up the crowd, who were leaving the venue with smiles on their faces and wanting more. Mission accomplished!
So stay tuned folks for some new DANCE TV, I’ll keep you updated and in the meantime……
LIVE, BREATH AND LOVE DANCE!!!
JET 🙂