Dance Life |
HOOP: How did you get involved with the Nets Dancers?
Jaclyn: When I was in college I lived with a few of the Knicks City Dancers; I went to Rutgers. And I knew of Petra Pope, I knew of her in the dance world. And when I graduated from college, I went on a Broadway tour of the show Contact!, and I broke my foot on the tour. They sent me home, and while I was recovering I was trying to figure out what I could do to keep me in the New York area. I thought maybe I could dance in sneakers; it wouldn’t really hurt my recovery. And I heard that Petra was moving over to the Nets, and she was taking over the program. So I knew it would be a great program. So I looked into the auditions. And it’s funny: the day I looked into them, the audition was the very next day at noon. So it was like, meant to be. So I showed up and danced, and they hired me, and I’ve been there ever since.
HOOP: How much interaction do dancers have with the players throughout the season?
Jaclyn: Interaction is definitely limited. The most we’ll see them is at a charity event, or sometimes at a sponsor event. The Nets do a lot of events for season-ticket holders as well, so stuff like that. So we’ll see them at those events, and we definitely are aware of each other. We know who everyone is, and we all work together. But it’s definitely limited to that.
HOOP: Do all the girls dance at every game, do you have a regular rotation; how does that work?
Jaclyn: We have 16 ladies on the team, and 12 dance at each game. So usually, if somebody needs to take off, or somebody gets sick, or there’s an injury, we have some leeway to play with. Some of us never get off; I rarely ever have a game off. [laughs] It just works out that way. I don’t mind it at all.
HOOP: So it’s like a regular job, in that there’s a work schedule everyone has to stick to.
Jaclyn: Definitely. Our schedule is pretty intense, just due to the NBA schedule this season for the Nets. It’s been intense, with games practically every other day. So we’re working every single day. We’ll have practice Tuesday and Thursday, we’ll have games Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And we’ll have events Saturday and Sunday. It’s been really nonstop this season. So we’re always in rehearsal or games or doing some event or some kind of performance.
HOOP: That’s a heck of a commitment.
Jaclyn: It is! It really is. People don’t know, they have no idea! I think it’s contingent upon the area you live in as well. I’m not very familiar with teams out in the Midwest and what their schedule consists of. But just being here in the New York-New Jersey area, there’s a lot of entertainment things always going on, and they’re always hiring us to do different events. Whether it’s a private function, somebody’s hiring us to dance at a bar or bat mitzvah, or corporate or sponsor event or even an NBA event—the NBA invited us to go out to Singapore last summer—there’s things that go on, being that we’re in the epicenter of entertainment here. I don’t know how different it is here, but I imagine it’s a little different than if I were dancing in, say, Indiana.
HOOP: Do you know why they changed the name of the dance team from Power N' Motion? We thought that was a unique and kind of cool name...
Jaclyn: What happened was Power N' Motion was back even before I was on the team, over three years ago. They hired Petra Pope from the Knicks and they created an entire new entertainment department. And so they wiped the slate clean, and they started a whole new team. And with that came a whole new image and a new name, new costumes, everything. They were really just trying to create the entertainment department. And they did a great job.
HOOP: So have you or any of the other ladies on the dance team been recognized outside the arena?
Jaclyn: Yes. Actually, it’s funny. In this area—we live not too far from the arena—I live with two of the other dancers, and especially in our building, everybody knows that Nets dancers live in the building. And we’ll be walking down the street and people are like, “Hey, are you guys sad that Jason Kidd got traded?” And they’re screaming at us down the street. It’s fine. [laughs] A lot of times we walk around in hats, but it is what it is. It’s the area we live in, there’s a lot of players and Giants and Jets players around here. People are used to seeing people who are involved in entertainment and in sports, so they always have their eyes open for it.
HOOP: From speaking with other girls, we realize there isn’t a whole lot of interaction between different teams. But because the Nets Dancers and the Knicks City Dancers are so close, is there a friendly rivalry?
Jaclyn: No, it’s funny, there’s no rivalry at all, because we work with them a lot. Not as the Nets and the Knicks, but just because, as professional dancers, we’re constantly booking other gigs outside of the NBA arena. We all have agents, and we’re all constantly working, doing commercials, or music videos, or other things. It’s a small industry, so we’ll see each other all the time: we’ll book jobs together, or sometimes we’ll be part of organizations where we’re actually working together. So we know each other very well. Some of my closest friends are former Knicks City Dancers. So there’s no rivalry at all.
HOOP: Ideally, which current Broadway play would be the one you would want to be in?
Jaclyn: They’re all so different, and I love all of them for different reasons. There’s A Chorus Line, which is classic. I saw it for the first time when I was 5 years old, and that’s probably the show that made me love Broadway. But there’s so many new shows out now, like Wicked and Legally Blonde and all these hot new shows that are so much fun that I would love to do. But to be honest with you, if any Broadway show wanted to hire me, I would not complain. [laughs] I would take it, no problem.
HOOP: From one fellow Rutgers alum to another: tell me your favorite fat sandwich.
Jaclyn: Well, the Fat Cat is a classic. But I’d say the Fat Beach. That was my favorite.
