What many call a hobby, others call it their work, or the passion of a lifetime. There are many stories that come together in the studio when it’s time to work with their next client. This time, a demanding one, a very big one. From Los Angeles, California, they prepared to travel thousands of kilometers with -for millions- the best live band of the current times: Muse.
The «Muse Dancers» joined this tour as a great visual accompaniment to what was the Simulation Theory World Tour, finished last Tuesday in Peru. With memorable performances, leaving a mark on the fans who attended in person, or by videos, to the shows of the british band, the american choreographers aroused great interest in how they harmonized their dances with a rock band.
Cajita Musical, trying to find out a little more about the work of the interpreters of this art, and wanting to make it known for everyone what they lived for almost a year since rehearsals began, until today, got in touch with them during the second to last show of the world tour. In communication with the ten artists, we share their impressions.
Muse Dancers was composed by a big group of people, in this interview we shared a talk with Nico Lonetree, Brianna Pavon, Keanu Uchida, Taylor Sieve, Emily Crouch, Taylor Banks, Lex Ishimoto, Kelly Dankbar, Andrea Bess and Savannah Harrison:
Cajita Musical: How’s been your experience in Perú? These final hours…
Keanu Uchida: We really just got here yesterday.
CM: Since what year you’d been doing this? (Dancing and touring with Muse)
Kelly Dankbar: Well, we’ve been dancing for the tour since December of 2018, and then I think we all kinda got the job about a week later, so like the end of the year 2018, and then we’ve been doing this since the beginning of 2019. And so it’s been almost a year, which is crazy and, yeah, I’ve been only dancing since I was 15, so a little bit late compared to other people.
Keanu Uchida: We didn’t even know that.
Kelly Dankbar: You didn’t know that?
Keanu Uchida: No. Well, since our rehearsals we started in LA, but we’ve been going since January kind of on and off, but yeah, it’s been pretty consistently. We’ve been travelling. Most of us are LA based, and it just made it the most of the auditions there, so we are from all over the city.
CM: And where are you from? Because I guess you are LA based like most of us or most of you, but, ah, is there anyone who is from UK or, I don’t know, any other country?
Keanu Uchida: I’m from Canada and then… yeah, that’s all. Well, we’re all from America, but everyone is from a different part of America. Some from the East Coast, some are from Miami.
CM: And have you worked together like, two of you or… any of you together before working with Muse?
Keanu Uchida: We’d never worked with Muse, but we all have worked together before.
Nico Lonetree: Yeah, I had works actually, me, Savannah and Tay did the Thought Contagion video. Many of us had jobs before together, so many of us knew each other before this.
CM: I was in the show in Chile, and loved the Thought Contagion performance, but what’s your favorite song to perform?
Taylor Banks: Hi! My favorite is Propaganda. I like to shoot the gun. That’s pretty badass.
CM: Have you practiced with those guns before, or do you have it in the rehearsals also?
Taylor Banks: No, not before the tour, ever.
CM: And what’s your favorite Muse song? You’ve worked in like doing the choreos and all that stuff, but, do you like Muse or did you like Muse before working with them?
Andrea Bess: I feel like we all kind of knew of Muse singing very popular songs, but I do feel like the tour has definitely may be enjoyable more as a fan, and I think personally my favorite song is Bliss, but it’s just so cool hearing and perform every night. I think that kind of, it’s the best way of becoming a fan of a band, it’s a cool vibe.
Keanu Uchida: I like Madness.
Nico Lonetree: I like Plug in baby and Hysteria.
Emily Crouch: I like Starlight because whenever they play it, we all dance around and it’s always really fun.
Nico Lonetree: Yeah, we all… you guys, you don’t see us on backstage, but we enjoy the music backstage as well.
CM: Yes, I saw the videos that you recorded in Santiago so… yes, I think that you like to enjoy the music also.
Keanu Uchida: Yeah, like Andrea was saying, I think it’s like we’ve all heard the songs before. We’ve just never put a name to it, and we never knew it was all Muse until we got here, and we were all like “oh… cool”.
CM: What about the country or the city that you liked the most? To perform and in general.
Nico Lonetree: The one I liked to perform the most was the crowd of Mexico City, I think. They were like, for every song I feel like I didn’t see one person not jumping, and you can feel it like dancing on stage. Like the whole stage was vibrating and it was crazy. I felt like this shaky, it was so many people jumping that people working under could feel the stage shake.
CM: That’s nice! And in South America or in Europe which city you liked the most? I know now that Mexico is your favorite one, but making top 3 cities. Could you rank them?
Andrea Bess: North America was probably… yeah, it was insane. We performed at Madison Square Garden in New York, which is cool for us dancers.
Keanu Uchida: Yeah, we sold out too.
Andrea Bess: Yeah, we sold that one out, we performed in The Forum in LA, which was also really cool, and I really loved performing at them. Also Sacramento.
Group: Oakland.
CM: Wow. In South America, did you like Chile?
Group: Loved it. Yes.
Keanu Uchida: All the crowds, just this energy I feel in like in all the shows, this crazy passion, it’s like a bit different than the other places.
Nico Lonetree: Yes, South America was definitely the most energetic in the audience. It was a lot, a lot of passion, and it was really fun to watch.
Keanu Uchida: Rio. The biggest crowd ever, I think.
Group: Yeah.
CM: I see. Well, saw the streaming also, so I saw that you were like a little point in the middle of a lot of crowd. What has been the most memorable moment through the tour? Because, yes, you have visited a lot of cities, a lot of countries, but the most loved moment that you had in the tour?
Nico Lonetree: That’s a hard one there. They’re so many.
Taylor Sieve: I would say maybe the Paris shows were the highlights for us, because that was one of our first shows in Europe that was one of the biggest most massive crowds that we had to perform in front of, and the fans also wrote out, ah, something cool for the band, which is really neat to see that they planned that out. That was a cool show.
Keanu Uchida: I think it was just exciting for us to realize that we were starting to be, I guess, accepted by the Muse kind of world. Because I know it was like something very different for them to see, you know, like dance on a stage with a rock band but there definitely was a point on the tour over, I think, people were just trying to express their vibe, they were like, yeah, you know, “this is cool for us” or, you know “this enhances the experience” kind of so… yeah, that’s not like a specific moment but, yeah.
CM: You’re part of the band. Yes, it’s like most of the people don’t recognize more band icons than the “Big Three”, like Dom, Chris and Matt, but you’re part of the band also.
All: Thank you.
CM: Well, I have asked you about the best crowd that you had played with. Let’s go to the side of the rehearsals and all that stuff. How many hours do you train per day?
Nico Lonetree: Oh, per day? I’d say on show days we have about an hour of rehearsal every time we had a show there.
Andrea Bess: An hour or two, I mean, sometimes.
Keanu Uchida: Like 30 minutes to an hour. We were, I think that at the beginning, in January, when it was just rehearsal. We would go for like a week straight with… How many hours at day? Like eight hours at day. And when there is a new stage, and there is always adjustments needed to that one also, so it takes a few hours, but a lot of this is just kind of piecing together which, you know, I guess when it’s done, it’s done.
CM: Nice. And how this dancing career came up? Because you were adolescents, you were kids, you were in high school, but how this dancing career came up? Like “oh, I want to become a professional dancer?”
Taylor Sieve: I think at some point everyone in their career chose what they wanted to take the chance on it, and either if you move to LA or New York or one other Coast in North America to try it out, and then we all ended up, you know, happening, to get agents and make connections and then we’re all brought together for this job which is pretty cool, but it all kind of happens, you know, at some point as a try out that you were ready for it. You decided to make that and pursue it to take a chance on it, for everyone.
Taylor Banks: I wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer, and then I ended up here so, yeah, it’s kind of random for everybody. You know, I had some friends, really a friend who’s at LA first and then come back and convinced me that I should go there. Because I had the right, I guess, energy, look, and I just did it instead of going to college so, you know… it’s random.
CM: But, any of you knew that you wanted to become a dancer since a kid? Or all of you made the same career?
Andrea Bess: I feel like, I kind of knew I wanted to be a dancer when I was like around 13 or 14, I just started high school. I think, as academics were becoming very important to some people, I realize that dancing was like most important obviously I still did well in school because that’s important as well. I found my interest towards dance, so I knew that would be the thing that would, kind of, bring the most fulfillments in my life. So, I think from that moment I worked for. I got to started taking it more seriously looking hard towards achieving that.
Keanu Uchida: You know, I think it’s interesting because, when you are in dancing, when you are a kid, act like it, doesn’t matter whether you’re maybe considering it a career, because everybody loves the idea of becoming a dancer. It’s so appealing to think about like working as a professional dancer but I think most people are just like “could I do it?” or like “would it worked out?” I think everyone like saw it as a dream, but we just run true whether it would be possible, and I think that’s what it has been even this tour and stuff where, you know, the world it’s a different kind of whatever dancing that usually isn’t hired for these types of tours, so I think for us it’s crazy to see these new kind of opportunities come up for like what we were trained for our entire life, you know, that I guess that only turned into like a reality when we really tried it, we were never sure of what this could be when we were younger.
CM: And have you liked this experience? It’s an obvious question, but I wanted to ask it.
All: Absolutely.
Nico Lonetree: No, it’s unbelievable. I think all of us are just like… it’s been so unbelievable.
CM: Nice! Well, what do you expect about the last concert of this tour?
Emily Crouch: I expect it to be really fun, and to say goodbye to the past 10 months of doing the same show over and over again, I think the last one should be really special. I am very proud…yeah, we made it.
Keanu Uchida: Yeah, we made it.
CM: You made it. You really made it. And will you take any vacations or will you still working together in this immediate future?
Taylor Banks: Well, you never now , in LA is… you know, we all go back to the grain of doing dance auditions and should be a few of us that got the same auditions we might do a couple of jobs together living there, but as for Muse, we’ll see.
CM: Thank you! Last question; any last message to say to all your friends in the world? Because you made a lot of fans and friends in the world, any last message to say?
Andrea Bess: Yeah, we just wanna say thank you, and we loved that the fans were so thankful, that they appreciated us and accepted us on the Muse stage, because I think they don’t necessarily have to, and we really enjoyed performing for them and being able to give them a different kind of show for Muse and I think that, yeah, it’s been really awesome getting to hear from them and given a great show. So, thank you.
Keanu Uchida: People that told us like… this learning about how much it means to people, how much music brings this people together, how much we can sort it to be part of that or like, you know, being a bridge for people at from everywhere, like being connected to this world, this world community, I think it’s unbelievable for us so… yeah, we really just feel so thankful.
Nico Lonetree: I think that sums it up, just being thankful. That’s really all there is, we’re super thankful of being part of this, just all great learning experience.
CM: Well guys, thank you so much for this words, this interview, this minutes that you had for me and you gifted to all of us. Thank you for the interest.
Keanu Uchida: Thank you again. It means so much that people are interested, it was so nice meeting you.
Interview and note made by Gonzalo Lara. Transcription and translation to spanish made by Natascha Lizama. Follow Cajita Musical on Instagram: instagram.com/cajitamusicaloficial