There were big-name music residencies, but those were commanded by veteran acts, such as Celine Dion and Elton John, with older fan bases. The Jabbawockeez found a way to make it all work, though their success was hardly a given in this city.Ĭonsider the Las Vegas entertainment landscape in 2010. “We were doing every single show, five days a week, ” Paguio recalls, “guys being injured and you’re still going on stage. But for Vegas, they had to put together a 90-minute performance at a time when they didn’t have a series of stand-in dancers to sub for them, as they do now. The physical demands were real: On TV, the Jabbawockeez would go hard during one-minute routines, which were expanded to 15- and 30-minute sets when they toured. Launching a Vegas show was no easier than mastering the group’s limb-bending choreography. That dream was realized in 2010, when the Jabbawockeez - who take their name from the Lewis Carroll poem “Jabberwocky” - debuted at the Monte Carlo, later moving to Luxor in 2013 and then the MGM Grand two years after that. This was a dream that Gary wanted us to do.’ ” When it came upon us, we were like, ‘We can’t deny this. “When we won the show on ‘America’s Best Dance Crew,’ a lot of things ended up coming to us, from going on tour, doing TV shows and everything, and having a show in Las Vegas was one of those things that fell into our lap. “When he died, our main thing was, ‘We’re going to do whatever we can for Gary, just represent him,’ ” he continues. We could inspire the world.’ At that time when we were younger, we thought it was far-fetched: ‘You’re crazy, Gary.’ “He was the one who always had a lot of big dreams, and one of the big dreams he said was, ‘We could have our own show in Vegas. “He was like the elder in our group,” Rynan “Kid Rainen” Paguio says. The Jabbawockeez’s road to Vegas is a story of triumph rooted in tragedy: The initial goal came from former Jabbawockee Gary “Gee” Kendall, who passed away in 2007 after a battle with pneumonia and meningitis. Yet here the Jabbawockeez are, celebrating 10 years in town with a new production, “Timeless,” which opens Friday at the MGM Grand. “When I hear ‘backup dancer,’ I literally hear, ‘Back up, dancer.’ We kind of got in the mindset of, ‘Dancers are artists, too.’ We are the show.”Ī member of the masked, hip-hop-influenced dance crew since 2004, Nguyen articulates the mentality that has made the Jabbawockeez unlikely stars - unlikely, at least, back when they formed in San Diego 17 years ago, long before they won the first season of reality-TV competition series “America’s Best Dance Crew” in 2008, popping and locking and pretzeling their bodies into the mainstream, followed by their own Vegas show. “For a long time dancers were backup dancers and were treated a certain way,” says the man who’s earned a living for over a decade now busting the kind of moves that others might bust a hip trying to imitate. ![]() T here was only one thing they were willing to dance behind. ![]() Cast members from the Jabbawockeez rehearse at the MGM Grand hotel-casino at 3799 Las Vegas Blvd.
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