Shane Sparks: Gladiator Style

The arena of dance isn’t just about art; it’s about a blood, sweat and tears sport with revolutionary competitors, like the award-winning, multi-talented Shane Sparks.

The field of dance is no different than that of football, for someone like Shane Sparks. When the feature film You Got Served opened at number one at the box office Super Bowl Weekend 2004, the world knew America’s thirst for gladiator-style sports. Actors Marques Houston, Megan Goode and Steve Harvey all helped to give life to the world of street dance competitions and Shane, as co-choreographer, was recognized with a 2005 BET Award and an American Choreography Award for his behind-the-scenes part.

Shane is now an Emmy-nominated choreographer for his work on FOX’s So You Think You Can Dance, which ended its fifth season this summer with 9.3 million viewers. Three days later, the fourth season of MTV’s Randy Jackson Presents: America’s Best Dance Crew opened with 2.3 million, on which Shane is a judge.

Kneepads, basement rehearsals and Cincinnati, Ohio battlegrounds–teen clubs and skating rinks–were his only formal training for such an outstanding career. “I was that guy that had kneepads on up under his suit going to church. I was that guy that had wrist bands and glasses and chains and stuff up under everything he wore, because at any given moment I was going to battle somebody and that was my mentality,” recalls Shane. “For certain people, dance was our football.”

Like many sporty youngsters, Shane had a bit of a soccer mom. “When I was younger, my mother would say dance for everybody, every time people would come over. I could remember specifically getting on the floor doing a forward roll, rolling on my side and people started to clap. That was probably the first time I ever got praise for something.”

By the time he was 20, Shane had moved to Los Angeles and was dancing and singing as part of a Jodeci-like group that was signed to the now defunct Warner Music Group subsidiary, Giant Records. There, he was also drafted to work as a dance teacher–a side hustle he still enjoys.

“I learned how to sing background, lead. I learned how to produce music, write songs. I learned so much in that process, it gives me a different angle on doing choreography … There [are] sounds in these songs that can be expressed. Most people dance on the downbeat. As you get sicker, you learn to dance just to the hi hat and sometimes you dance to the bass line, or the chords, or the lyrics. Then you start to dissect that song and you’re expressing that song a little bit better.”

Shane’s musicality and ability to teach, may well be his most formidable gifts. Coming from a raw-talent, hip hop world, he breaks technical dancers with the intricacy and passion of say, an Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings.

“It’s almost like when the tailback has the ball, he doesn’t have time to really think about what he’s going to do, he’s just reacting. But because he’s so good at it, you don’t realize that when he jukes to the left, he’s looking to the right to try to fake you out.”

Though Shane may be juking to the left, becoming known worldwide through hip hop, he’s set his vision beyond the one genre. “I’m not a hip hop choreographer, I’m a choreographer. I’m an artistic director.” This fall, just as football season is getting underway, he will be in New York City gearing up to go head-to-head with Super Bowl Weekend 2010, as co-choreographer for the national tour of the musical Dreamgirls.

“It’s definitely something that’s really challenging to me and I’m really, really, really excited to be a part of something so big coming from a hip hop point of view, you know what I mean? I’m giving it my all.”

By Sia Tiambi Barnes