On Tuesday, July 23, 2024 at 7:30 pm the Los Angeles Jazz Company will present The Time Is Now at the Avalon Hollywood benefiting Dancers Against Cancer. This dynamic concert will include music by the LA based Little Big Band with choreography by Al Blackstone, Chase Benz, Christian Vincent, Eric Sanchez, Michael Rooney, Sienna Lyons, Tyce Diorio, and more. Tickets are on sale now.
At the age of 18, Jackie Sleight began her jazz dance training at Roland Dupree’s studio where she later had her first teaching opportunity in his pre-jazz classes. It was there that she said that she learned the most about how to teach. She, of course, went on to teach all levels of jazz.
Jackie Sleight – Photo courtesy of the artist.
Sleight co-founded L.A. DanceMagic in 1999 along with dancer/teacher Dave Carter. Her work with young people in competition dance is said to be unchallenged and her teen dancers, A Sleight Touch, won the Star Search Teen Championship, and her group, Boys Club went on to win $100,000 as the Star Search Dance Champions. Subdivisions of the LA DanceMagic Company are Pro Track, Senior Company, Men’s Company and Junior Company. You can watch a L.A. DanceMagic video HERE.
Taking time from a rehearsal for next week’s performance, Sleight and I met on Zoom for what turned out to be a very enjoyable interview.
L.A. Dance Magic has been so successful, so I asked Sleight to talk about it and how it began.
“I didn’t know anything about dance conventions until I started teaching at one,” she said. “I started teaching on Roland Dupree’s convention job and did that for a few years and then on Joe Tremaine dance conventions.” Tremaine is a good friend of Sleight and she said that she owes him everything. The two of them opened a dance studio together in North Hollywood and after a few years Sleight decided to go her own way.
Los Angeles Jazz Company – Jackie Sleight (center) with (Clockwise from top left) Will Thomas, Brandon Leffler, George Lawrence, Daisy McMillan, Jaycee Maya Piper, and Annabelle Maliwanag – Photo courtesy of LAJC.
Regarding the competitive part of it, Sleight said, “We do it for a couple of reasons, one being that the students’ parents enjoy seeing their children perform at them.” She tells her students that it is a place for them to perform and that they do not have a bunch of those opportunities. “Do your best. Have your best time. This is fun and maybe you’re going to win something.” There are classes all day of the competitions and Sleight is very proud of her faculty. “They are beyond professional. Beyond spectacular. Beyond giving,” she continued. “They don’t brag about themselves and they’ve done everything you could imagine. So the information that they bring is incredible.”
Long before this, Sleight worked for Bob Banner’s television production company. It was he who suggested that she put a group together and put them on Star Search. She did and they won the Star Search Teen Championship. The ratings were so high that they asked her back and this time she entered an all boy group, The Boy Club that went on to win $100,000 as the Star Search Dance Champions. “It was so much fun just to watch this funny thing happen in the ‘80s that was apparently cool,” she added.
While doing my research for this interview I came across the term “A Sleight Touch.” I wanted to know more.
Sleight started by saying that she had been in a dance group that Dupree put together and they were performing for three weeks at a club called Destiny 2 (before it was known as Chippendale’s). After their run, she went back to see the next group that was performing there and the owner approached her saying that he needed a new act in two weeks and he did not have one. “I have one,” Sleight told the owner. “And I did not!” When the owner asked what it was called, she told him A Sleight Touch and it included six female dancers who were in jail. “My brain was on fire and I was flying,” she admitted.
The owner hired A Sleight Touch and told her that the group began in two weeks. Asking herself “What have I done?” she went to Roland Dupree who handed her a record album, pushed her into an empty studio and said, “Go!”
Celebration following dance convention – Photo courtesy of L.A. DanceMagic.
“In two weeks I had a twenty minute act, then swear to God, for two years we toured,” she said. “We went to Japan and we went to Mexico, and suddenly I was a choreographer.”
Los Angeles Jazz Company was founded in 2023 by dancer, choreographer and teacher, Jackie Sleight who studied and worked with such jazz dance greats as Roland Dupree, Joe Tremaine, Joe Bennett and Rick Milland. The year before, the company debuted at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre with Full Circle: A Jazz Dance Concert with such influential choreographers as Al Blackston, Christian Vincent, Dominique Kelley, Hector Guerrero, Mandy Moore, Michael Rooney, Will Bell and others.
Sleight said that she had been thinking of starting a company for a long time and was inspired by Roland Dupree who in 1978 started the Los Angeles Jazz Company (the same company name that she then chose). She was his assistant. “He did it in 1978 and then it disappeared,” she explained. “I thought, I can not let Jazz disappear and I can’t let the people who affected my entire life disappear, or every second of the rest of my life disappear.” She chose the Wilshire Ebell Theatre for the first performance because that is where Dupree had his performances of the Los Angeles Jazz Company.
Every choreographer that Sleight invited to be on that first concert in 2022, a year before she formerly founded Los Angeles Dance Company, said yes. “And the night of the show I couldn’t get the people to come inside and sit down because it was like this huge reunion.” Sleight said that her group had built a huge family tree to go in the theatre’s lobby. “From the beginning, from the roots out. Everyone was on it, everyone,” she said. “The names were on leaves and it was stunning. We put a basket of leaves there and some pens and everyone came and put their name and stuck it next to their teachers.”
This gave Sleight the encouragement that she needed to formally name her company The Los Angeles Jazz Company, which has since become a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.
Sleight is on the Board of Directors for Dancers Against Cancer and she explained how when she runs into a child whose family member is fighting cancer, she sends their name to Dancers Against Cancer. “And within minutes they’re sending a check,” she said. “They’re so great!”
While in New York working on a documentary, Sleight was interviewing Jennifer Jones, the first black Radio City Rockettes dancer. During a break, Jones explained that times had been tough because she had been battling breast cancer and sleeping on her boyfriend’s couch. Sleight called Dancers Against Cancer and in a couple of days, Jones had received a check for $10,000. Jones has since become one of the organization’s ambassadors.
So, The Los Angeles Jazz Company is presenting The Time Is Now at the Avalon Hollywood to help raise awareness of Dance Against Cancer and hopefully some donation funds to follow.
Los Angeles Jazz Company’s concert poster – Courtesy of the company.
“I want to make this an inspirational program, not a concert,” Sleight said while talking about her company. “Yes, it’s a concert, but in general. These people teach, so we’re going out to schools to show dance to people who may not be able to see it. We have community class once a month in Los Angeles. Our people teach a class. The studio donates the space so nobody gets paid and no one has to pay.”
Sleight wants people to remember jazz, not just how it used to be, but to watch it continue to grow and to see how it has evolved.
WHAT: The Los Angeles Jazz Company presents The Time Is Now, a benefit for Dancers Against Cancer.
WHEN: July 23, 2024 at 7:30 PM
WHERE: The Avalon Hollywood, 1735 Vine Street, Los Angeles, CA. 90028
TICKETS: $65 – To purchase tickets, please click HERE and scroll down.
To learn more about The Los Angeles Jazz Company, please visit their website.
To learn more about Dancers Against Cancer (DAC) and to make a donation, please visit their website.
This article was edited on 7/18/24
Written by Jeff Slayton for LA Dance Chronicle.
Featured image: Los Angeles Jazz Company – Brandon Leffler and Daisy McMillan and ensemble – Photo courtesy of LAJC.
