INTERVIEW: Emma Slater brings ‘Dancing With the Stars’ to NJ
Photo: Dancing With the Stars, both the TV show and live tour, features Emma Slater. Photo courtesy of ABC / Provided by press rep with permission.
Dancing With the Stars: Live Tour 2022 pulls into the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey, this week for a spirited performance from the beloved dancers on the hit competition series. Audience members can purchase tickets for the Wednesday, Jan. 19 show, which will feature Mirror Ball Champion Kaitlyn Bristowe from The Bachelorette, plus Brandon Armstrong, Alan Bersten, Artem Chigvintsev, Sasha Farber, Daniella Karagach, Pasha Pashkov, Gleb Savchenko, Emma Slater and Britt Stewart, among others.
Of course, for those who have been living under a rock, Dancing With the Stars has been around for more than a decade, and its recent season was the show’s 30th. On the series, professional dancers are paired with celebrities from all sectors of entertainment and sports, and each week they face off against one another and are judged by a team of dance experts. The bottom pairing doesn’t make it to the next week.
This gargantuan hit for ABC inspired a live tour that features the professional dancers performing many well-known routines, including Cha Cha, Foxtrot, Salsa and Tango.
Slater, a past champion on the show, was recently paired with singer-songwriter Jimmie Allen, who made it quite far, but was eliminated after week 8. Recently Slater jumped on a phone call with Hollywood Soapbox to talk about the TV phenomenon and what fans can expect at the State Theatre in New Jersey. Here’s what she had to say …
On how the live tour differs from the TV show …
This live tour is a little different. We have a lot of rock ‘n’ roll music. We have some fantastic light shows. The dancers haven’t been on the road for two years, so the choreography, in my opinion, is some of the best that we’ve seen. … I really feel that this show will make a lot of people happy. And we’ve already done three shows, and we’ve had an incredible response. I’m so happy with the comments and the videos that people have been sending us, so the fans can really expect a lot of high energy, full-out dancing and excited dancers that haven’t been on the stage for two years. So we’re just really happy to be there.
On how COVID-19 has disrupted her dancing …
We haven’t been as affected as others have been, so I consider myself quite lucky in that sense. Now I’m not oblivious to the fact that people have lost jobs, people have been furloughed, and so I don’t consider myself someone who has been impacted too much. As a dancer, you are somewhat freelance anyway, so to us, we were really happy that we were able to do the Dancing With the Stars TV show in 2020 and 2021. And we were one of the first TV shows that were up and running live in their regular venue, so I really consider myself lucky. It was hard coming off of the tour in 2020. We had to cut our tour short because of COVID, and that was really difficult for us.
On whether the tour or TV show is more draining …
Being on tour is not draining at all. For me, I absolutely love it. It’s so great traveling around. I could live in a suitcase. Like, I’m that type of person anyway, but it’s not draining. Because we don’t have to choreograph on the tour. We already know what we’re doing. We’re performing with fellow dancers every night. I would definitely say it’s easier. It’s more challenging mentally on the mind to do the TV show, but it’s more challenging physically to do the tour. It’s completely different. We wake up in a new city every day. We sleep on a bus at night. We’re constantly around each other. To me, it’s amazing. I love it, and I love traveling to each new city and getting out and seeing what that city has to offer. I’ve done nine tours now, so I pretty much know each city really well.
On her initial feelings when paired with a celebrity …
It’s a really exciting moment for us to open the door and see your partner. First of all, you’re star-struck if that’s somebody that you’ve really admired and you’ve followed their career, and then secondly you have to then figure out if they’re really good at dancing, which is really hard in itself. … It is very real. You really do spend hours and hours and hours a day training your celebrity, thinking creatively about the best choreography you can do. So it is really sad when you don’t make it through, especially when the celebrity is also on the same page as you, and they are so enthusiastic and happy to be here. It is an emotional roller-coaster and a journey that changes people’s lives, so you want to stay in it genuinely for as long as possible.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Dancing With the Stars: Live Tour 2022, featuring Emma Slater, will play Wednesday, Jan. 19 at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Click here for more information and tickets.
