Danceon channel warms up
HOLLYWOOD — Amanda Taylor spent much of her professional life in New York representing actors and dancers, including veteran hoofer Ben Vereen. But she has just traded Gotham for the dream factory here, where she hopes to become dancing’s next star — from behind the camera.
Today, she and a half-dozen staffers of Danceon Network, one of Youtube’s new channels, are in a cavernous warehouse auditioning dancers and choreographers for parts in their first show, Dance Showdown on Youtube. Think of it as Dancing With the Stars, only the stars are folks who have made it big on Youtube; viewers vote for winners.
If this channel idea sounds a bit random, consider that for the longest time, Youtube’s most popular video was Judson Laipply’s quirky ode to myriad dancing styles, “The Evolution of Dance” (187 million views and counting, dusted of late by Justin Bieber’s Baby with 685 million views). In fact, this is just the sort of channel that might fly on Youtube, catering as it does to a specific but passionate group without national boundaries.
“Dance is global, it’s in movies like Black Swan and Mamma Mia!, in musicals like Chicago, but no one is doing premium content online about it,” says Taylor. She convinced Madonna, who is an adviser to and investor in Danceon.
“Let’s not even talk about how big a TV show like Dancing With the Stars is,” Taylor says. “There definitely is a chance here to meet an audience need.”
Watching nervously as former Janet Jackson collaborator Galen Hooks rips through a dazzling routine is Kingsley Russell, a 21-year-old who is pushing a million Youtube subscribers on “It’s Kingsley, B - - - .” Though he’s exceedingly soft-spoken, his Youtube persona is that of a ranting lunatic.
“I don’t know anything about dancing, so I’m nervous about being on this show,” says Russell, who also recently moved to Los Angeles, from St. Louis, to see how far his Youtubegenerated fame can go. “For me and my friends, Youtube’s mainly a place for random videos that go viral. I’m not sure if people are looking for regular programming there. But if they are, I’m interested in being a part of it.”
Hooks, mopping sweat from her brow, walks over and says hello to Russell, who mockcowers in fear of the dancing machine. The choreographer/dancer says she tried out for Danceon’s show because she likes to be “on the cutting edge of things.”
Interestingly, Hooks is a TV junkie, and often joins her mother for hours at a time watching everything from reality shows to PBS documentaries. She rarely watches anything on a computer; that said, a show about dancing might change her habits.
“There’s nothing on TV that I would watch about my kind of dancing,” she says. “What’s cool is that you do a dance move on video, and the whole world can see it, and fast. So I think a show like Danceon’s could really work.”