SFist Interview: Artistic Director/Choreographer Jason Gilkison
by Tiffany Maleshefski
If there's anything that ABC's Dancing with the Stars has taught us, B- and C-list celebrities may never be cool again, but ballroom dancing, on the other hand, will be. Even when decked out in sequins and ostrich feathers, there's just something about the tango, cha-cha-cha, salsa, and swing that folks can't help but move to. After all, this is the dance form our grandparents and great-grandparents used to rock out on, back when it was just something you knew how to do—like the Kid-n-Play or the Electric Slide.
With dance on the brain, we sat down to chat with Jason Gilkison, choreographer and artistic director of Harley Medcalf's Burn the Floor, which opens tonight at the Post Street Theatre. See, Medcalf has done for ballroom what, um, Michael Flatley did for Irish leg kicking. But we mean that in the nicest way possible.
Gilkison and his 33-year dance partner, Peta Roby, worked their butts off to become legends. By age 23, the duo sashayed their way as the world's No.1 champions of ballroom dance. Now they celebrate a decade with Burn the Floor, the sexy and sumptuous show that's hardly, strictly ballroom.
Reading your bio, your parents sacrificed a lot for your dancing career. Do you remember how you felt about that? Was it just the natural course of things? Did you ever question it?
It's really funny because I grew up in my grandfather's dancing school. I remember watching my mom teach at the studio since I was the age of 4. I sort of never thought it was going to be something serious in my life. I think the big turning point for me was a world championship [the World Ballroom and Latin American Championships] came to [Perth,]Australia, which was never heard of in the 1980s.
My dancing partner at the time and I were 13. We watched this and it was everything we wanted to do. At that stage in competitions, we were quite bad. I remember my parents humoring us saying, "If you really want to do this, you just reach as far as you can." From that moment on my dancing partner and I thought we'd be world champions. No one took us seriously for the first couple of years, then we made it to the top in Australia and then went to London and by 1989 we'd become world champions. Having world champions in Australia was kind of ridiculous?
Really? Why?
Back then no couple of outside of Europe had won the world championship, so to break that…I think someone had done that in 1932, so it had been a long time. Since the mid-80s there's been South African world champions and Latin American world champions, but back then there was a sort of European stronghold on competition ballroom dancing. It was quite a big undertaking.
Is the world of ballroom dance really catty?
When you put competition on anything or money involved there's always going to be some bitchiness. I think it's such a perfect industry to draw parallels when you see something like Strictly Ballroom. There is that side to the competition world, definitely. When you take competition and judging out, these people are very, very human and very, very nice.
Speaking of, what was the most interesting thing about being on NBC's Superstars of Dance?
I think everybody had YouTubed each other over the years. All these dancers from all over the world,,,the Russian ballerina, the Chinese acrobats, and the Irish dancers…it was so interesting having us all on the one set at the same time. You'd have the Russian ballerina and American hip-hop guy with the Irish dancer, talking about different ways to do steps. After the show everyone would really mix it up. It was actually rewarding in the show.
How did you guys place?
We got second!! To be honest we were really surprised. I remember when we left Australia I just thought I hope we don't get lost.
Tell us about 'Burn the Floor'.
When we're putting show together we sort of compare it to finding your grandma's antique jewelry extracting the stone and putting it in a modern setting. Basically this is what our grandparents did when they were out on the town. They did the waltz and cha cha cha. They didn't take lessons that's just they went out and did it. We changed the orchestrations, added more percussion. Now people have an understanding of ballroom dancing. We thought maybe BTF should take it further than what hey are seeing on television.
What is a typical day look like for you?
At the moment, particularly when we are loading into a city…as the city wears on, it does settle down. Straight after I get off the phone with you, I'll go into our tech rehearsals. The company joins us about mid-day. Then there are rehearsals and lighting and working with the company until dinner break at 5. Then it's the warm up for show, a 2.5 hour show, and then after that, get to bed and the same thing starts all over it.
How do you not get burned out?
The whole thing is we're in this company and all the dancers in this company are gravitated toward this project because we want to be the first ballroom show that takes peoples' impression of ballroom dancing in a different direction. So what we're doing is reinventing what people typically think of ballroom dancing.
What runs through your mind when the dancers are out on the floor?
I have great faith in the dancers, although I don't dance on stage myself anymore (now I'm sitting behind the lighting desk or in the director's chair— it's great to see the way these dancers react with an audience. And I love to see how the dancers react and also how the audiences react to this form of dance.
Do you ever see them mess up?
They're petty good at covering up these days. The thing is you'll always have circumstances that are going to be different. It's getting them in the headspace to roll with something even if it's not exactly what happened at rehearsal. When you got 20 performers on a very small stage, there are bound to be traffic issues from time to time.
Hardest lesson you had to learn?
Not a hard lesson, but I think there's no such thing as luck. It's amazing how lucky you get when you work really hard. I've been lucky enough that I was always taught from a young age if you work hard the success will come. You may think there is a shorttcut to the top, but their actually isn't. We've been going on 10 years, and we've made possibly every mistake there is to make, but those mistakes drive you forward.
Hardest step for you?
It's always the easier stuff. I think the company would agree with that. Whenever you're dancing all the spectacular tricks and stuff that is quite crowd-pleasing (the big throws and big slides, etc.), but the painstaking basic technical stuff that… the audience doesn't know they're perfectly mesmerized because someone is so technically brilliant.
So even the waltz can trip your dancers up?
Oh yeah definitely. The hardest thing for a dancer to achieve is something slow. Many people are good when they're fast. When someone is slow, all alone on the stage, with very slow music…to be able to capture the audience is the biggest undertaking a performer can have.
If you were going to burn the floor for real, what would you use?
Really? Substantial alcohol? What do you mean? Me or the group?
Let's say the group.
That's a difficult question because everything they do seems to burn the floor. This company can't help but smoke up into any venue they walk into. It's so easy for them to go into a space and create heat. It's electricity.
So when they walk into a nightclub, is it ever awkward?
The blend in quite well usually.
What do you think you'd be doing if you weren't dancing?
I'd sleep a lot more. It would definitely have to be something in the arts. Probably a frustrated painter or an actor I'd have to find a way to express myself.
Burn The Floor will play San Francisco's Post Street Theatre (450 Post Street, 2nd floor) through March 15, 2009. Tickets: $39 to $69.
Tickets are on sale now at the Post Street Theatre box office, by phone at 415-771-6900 or online at Ticketmaster.com.
For more information, visit poststreettheatre.com or burnthefloor.com.