Phil "Swagger Boy" Tayag, along with the rest of the JabbaWockeeZ dance crew, experienced what can only be described as a meteoric rise to fame after appearing on and winning the first season of America's Best Dance Crew. Since then, JabbaWockeeZ has taken the world by storm appearing in movies, on television, and even at Universal Studios as part of Halloween Horror Nights last year. Now the masked movers are setting up shop in Vegas. The crew recently opened their show JREAMZ at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. JREAMZ is actually JabbaWockeeZ's third Las Vegas show, with two previous runs in the Monte Carlo and Luxor Hotels under their belt.
Meanwhile, Tayag, who serves as the creative director for JREAMZ, also got the chance to branch out as a choreographer for the music video for Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars' smash hit "Uptown Funk," and also for Super Bowl 50, working with Bruno Mars, Beyoncé, and Coldplay. TheCelebrityCafe.com was able to catch up with Tayag just before the grand opening of JREAMZ on Feb. 19 to learn more about the new show, choreographing the Super Bowl and what's next for the JabbaWockeez.
TheCelebrityCafe.com: Can you just tell me a little bit about the JabbaWockeeZ's upcoming show? I know it's called JREAMZ and it's at the MGM Grand...
Phil Tayag: We actually have been in Vegas for six years. We started off at MGM doing like a trial run, went to Monte Carlo, then we moved to Luxor and now we're back at MGM and with our MGM family. But we just opened, we did a soft opening of our show called JREAMZ in November. It's a brand new show and pretty much it's about ... not being on autopilot in life every day. People ... they might be working their day jobs and not even enjoy what they're doing and pretty much what this show is about. JREAMZ, is about this character PJ, who ultimately finds out or finds a way to get off of being autopilot. He's living in this mundane zombie-ish world and he has this dream, or these dreams, and he goes on this journey and kind of finds himself, and when he wakes up he realizes that he doesn't want to be a zombie anymore, he wants to live out his dreams. So he snaps out of being in autopilot and does his thing and lives happily ever after.
TCC: That's fantastic. So this is a continuous narrative it's not ... is it a series of pieces or is it just like one big piece?
PT: No, it's a series of pieces that ultimately kind of thread together to kind of piece this whole story together. One story but different songs, different numbers.
TCC: How many pieces are there approximately?
PT: That's a great question. About 15.
TCC: And it's totally JabbaWockeeZ? Do you bring in any outside artists?
PT: Oh no, it's totally JabbaWockeeZ for sure. We choreograph our own stuff we direct it and produce it. All JabbaWockeeZ crew.
TCC: When did you come up with the inception for this show?
PT: It kind of happened organically, we were trying to figure out a name as we were just kind of ultimately piecing the show together and probably a few months ... well, let's see we opened in November, so earlier in that year I would say we actually finally loved the name JREAMZ. I want to say, August or June, we fell in love with the name JREAMZ. We were toying around with a lot of other things, but we kind of noticed the cool play on JREAMZ with a J ending with a Z like JabbaWockeeZ. It was kind of a cool thing with that, and so ultimately JabbaWockeeZ has a little bit of a street hip hop feel, but it's also whimsical and we're dreamers, and that's ultimately the message behind our show is just to pursue your dreams.
TCC: For people who may have come to see you back during your first run at the MGM or during the Luxor or the Monte Carlo are they going to recognize any of these pieces or are they all totally new?
PT: They're all totally new, yeah. We kind of experimented with some concepts when we did a short run at Universal Studios, but it's completely different from all of our other shows in Vegas.
TCC: The show has been out for four months now?
PT: Yes.
TCC: Has it changed at all since you first opened or have you kept things the same, have you realized that maybe something didn't work?
PT: Oh, yeah, for sure. The show is always constantly being revised. When we watch the show, we constantly are watching tapes, and we're just trying to figure out how to make the story read better, add different visuals, maybe improve some graphics, kind of change the choreography here and there. We're just always trying to tighten it up, but now that we're at the point where we have this grand opening this is us really owning the show and just letting that thing fly. So come grand opening, it's pretty much going to be what it is and over time. We'll probably make little adjustments, but we're going to let this particular version -- JREAMZ 1.0 -- we're going to let that fly for a while and see how it sits with the people. That's what's beautiful about having a theater show as opposed to a movie. With a movie, your finished product is a finished product. With ours we can kind of switch out to maybe a newer song or a song that might work better for a certain section. We can kind of change things around so yeah, we can always refresh our show.
TCC: Can you give me a specific example of something that didn't work early in a show that you had to say okay we have to change this?
PT: It's more so like sequencing. You want to take your show on a ride and there might be certain parts that might be anticlimactic, and you get stuck in certain acts or certain songs and just building where you're so zoomed in that by the time you zoom out you're not quite getting that payoff that you're looking for like with. As far as the overall ride, you kind of build and you stay zoomed in and by the time you zoom out you get to see how everything flows. Just like a roller coaster, it's like, 'oh, maybe I wanted it to kind of dip right here, and it needs to get kind of fun right there.' You're building up and then it didn't quite pop in certain parts. We're always watching for the parts where things can kind of get anticlimactic or how to help a story read a little better.
TCC: Do all of the members have a say or a hand in the choreography or do you have like maybe a group that choreographs the show? How does choreographing and putting it together work?
PT: What's beautiful is we're a crew and everyone has their input and I'm kind of just the overall guy. I'm the creative director at the end of the day, but what's cool is everyone has their input from choreography to the visual imagery, staging, all of that stuff costuming. My crew, the original crew, is very much involved and I just kind of help to sequence it and ultimately filter all of our ideas, but it's definitely a collective effort. I think what's beautiful about my crew is the fact that we started and we cover our faces, and it's more about this whole no ego type of philosophy mentality. It definitely shows with just the way that we work as a team and we really don't overpower each other, everybody just knows how to play their part and we're pretty cohesive. I think that's something that I'm actually proud of with our crew just the chemistry.
TCC: What type of movement is this are we going to see in this? Is there going to be a lot of tutting, is there going to be maybe some....
PT: Aaaye! I'm talking to a dancer.
TCC: Yes, you are.
PT: Alright. The thing about JabbaWockeeZ, and I think before us people weren't really merging styles, and we really really admired Bruce Lee and how Bruce Lee took the best of any style so that he came across a style of no styles. I think that's just something that we've always been about. There is definitely the dancing aspect and the groove aspect too. The street type of swag too, getting more technical with the waving and the tutting and the locking and the breaking and the vaudville the character the -- People kind of call it miming, but I think there's a lot that we kind of mix in together to ultimately create this JabbaWockeeZ vibe, you know the humor. You don't see our faces, so definitely it's based around our body language. We love different types of different genres of music to different genres of dance. Obviously hip hop is the foundation, but you'll see a little bit of everything. I think that's what makes it fun, for us at least, and I think that's what's cool about what we do. Obviously, if we're having fun then the people have fun watching us, because ultimately we're having fun and that's what it's about.
TCC: Great. How do you think you as an individual and JabbaWockeeZ as a crew has evolved from when you first burst onto the scene when you won America's Best Dance Crew, to now you're opening your own show, how do you think you've evolved at all?
PT: Wow. I think it's more so owning the character about us and we don't have to necessarily go out and perform like a dance team and be so competitive. We're not really competing. I think that's what really helped us to grow is the fact that, yeah, we did come from a competition show, but before that, at the end of the day we're kind of competing with ourselves. You know we did a competition show, it was cool we actually won, but we were really there to represent. For one, our crew and who we are and what we stand for, and then, also, our fallen member Gary Kendall Gee One. As far as what we do it's really us competing with ourselves and just being in our element and learning to be free. We'll forever be students, and we'll always be open to learning and revising and even relearning and building. I don't think we've ever really mastered anything, but I think that's where we get the mastery is we're mastering the art of being a student [laughs], if that makes sense.
TCC: No, that makes perfect sense.
TCC: I do want to ask you a little bit about the Super Bowl, because I did see it, and I was completely blown away. So how did you get tapped to choreograph?
PT: Bruno [Mars] had reached out to me before we opened our show at Luxor three years ago and he wanted me to do "Treasure." He wanted me to work with him on "Treasure," and it just kind of didn't work out. He was getting really busy, I was really busy at the time with putting together our show at Luxor. We were like two weeks from opening, and I just couldn't commit to it although I really wanted to. I've known of Bruno, we have some mutual friends, and just thought it would be cool to work with him. He seemed like a good person. We made contact about three years ago, kept in touch.
A couple of years later, he reaches out to me and he asks me if I'm ready to hop on this new record with him. It was "Uptown Funk," and I already knew it was going to be a mega smash, and I just knew it was going to be a classic like that thing was going to play at weddings for years and generations to come and sure enough we were right. I was right, and this thing was a friggin' mega smash. We ended up doing the music video "Uptown Funk," and it kind of took off. I think it's like a billion, three million views right now, and I know there aren't many music videos that do that kind of numbers. It's really mind blowing, and [I am] really thankful that the stars aligned and I was able to work with Bruno and the guys with such a great record. So everything kind of aligned, we did that the music video became a hit and then Bruno got asked to do the Super Bowl and the rest is history.
TCC: How long did it take to choreograph that entire section?
PT: We were at it for a good month just vibin' out. Yeah. It was fun though.
TCC: Did you perform with him or did you just choreograph?
PT: Yeah.
TCC: Oh, so you performed with him. How did that feel, what was the energy like, how did the performance feel on you?
PT: It was a little different because I come from different crews and have performed without a mask. I do music, I rap, so I'm really used to that, being in front of crowds but, factoring in the Super Bowl, factoring in Bruno and then on top of that Beyoncé and Coldplay, not wearing a mask, it was a lot of anxiety and anticipation kind of built up, but by the time we performed everything just kind of flowed as it should and it was really magical.
TCC: You were without your crew right?
PT: Yeah, I was without my crew.
TCC: What did they say to you maybe before or after the performance -- did they give you any advice did they help you generate movement at all?
PT: Oh, for sure. My crew was so supportive and they know that this is something that I've always wanted to do. I thought when I was younger and I was really aiming to choreograph for Aaliyah. I watched like Justin Timberlake and all of these people and seeing what Justin Timberlake's choreographer did for him, kind of helped curate and build this whole style around him, and I've just sort of been waiting for that opportunity to put my material on a recording artist and it really really worked out. Beyoncé did the choreography as well and that was a whole other epic event on it's own. Beyoncé's definitely one of my heroes.
TCC: One last question. Outside of the MGM show, what's next for JabbaWockeeZ and you? Is there anything else you're working, anything else we should get excited about?
PT: We've got this MGM thing going on, we're going to be doing a lot of different stuff. We're working on a webisode series, working on our documentary and we're just really focused on getting back out to the world and now that things are getting buttoned up in Vegas, we're just going to be really really getting back to our supporters and followers and we really just want to give them what they want to see and hear, more art, more music, more videos, more dancing, more fun. We've got our clothing line popping off. We're doing shows, we're getting back on the road, we're-- there's a lot. There's a lot.
TCC: Great. And when is the grand opening of the show?
PT: The grand opening is on Feb. 19.