Last night Claire and I attended the opening night of Jabbawockeez at Jupiters Hotel & Casino in Broadbeach.
I was fortunate enough to get a pair of tickets from work for not only the opening night of their incredible dance performance but also the grand opening for the $20 million refurbished Jupiters Theatre. The newly renovated theatre now has capacity for 1929 seated guests or 2150 including standing room, which is double what it had before the renovation started in September 2011.
The night kicked off with one of the Jabbawockeez in a janitors uniform entertaining the crowd as everyone got seated, interacting with the audience and generally having a good time. Once everyone was seated Craig Peachey, who is the Acting Managing Director of Jupiters said a few words, welcomed all of the distinguished guests and then our newly elected Queensland Premier Campbell Newman said a few words before they were ‘swept’ off the stage by the janitor.
Jabbawockeez was the collaboration of three dancers from different styles, who joined forces to form a new style and group known as Jabbawockeez in 2003. They started out small in San Diego and Los Angeles but their big break came in 2006 when they appeared on Americas Got Talent where they took the place by storm and have been growing in popularity ever since. Jupiters Hotel & Casino have managed to get them from Las Vegas to the Gold Coast for the next five months.
One of the key features of Jabbawockeez, which is different to most other dance groups you’ll see is that all of the dancers are wearing the same clothing and have expressionless white masks on. Initially I thought it was a bit of a gimmick but with such a dynamic high energy performance, it really lets you focus on the dancing and not worry about identifying an individual dancer who just did something amazing; they are all amazing and you don’t know who did what amazing piece of the performance.
Claire and I absolutely loved the MÜS.I.C (muse-i-see) Jabbawockeez performance, which was directed by choreographers Tabitha and Napoleon of So You Think You Can Dance US fame. The music that the dancers performed to was fantastic and ranged from Queen to Prodigy and everything in between. The new state of the art sound system in Jupiters Theatre was absolutely pumping. While the music was loud, the thing that really hit home, literally, was the incredible bass; bone shaking!
If you’ve got an opportunity to see Jabbawockeez in the next few months while they are here in Australia performing at Jupiters Gold Coast, I’d definitely recommend it – they were fantastic and well worth your time and effort!