Megan Lawson – Dance Crew Star originally from Alberta (Article)

Hi everyone!

I had meant to post this earlier but I hadn’t gotten around to it until now.

While I included this story I wrote in my list of stories I wrote during my internship with the Edmonton Journal over winter break, technically this story was written before I actually started my internship so it was technically a freelance job I did for the Journal.

This story is right up at the top of the list of stories I’ve written that I’ve absolutely LOVED interviewing for and writing up and clipping out the final version.

It’s an article about Megan Lawson, a 23-year-old dancer originally from Calgary, Alberta, who moved to Los Angeles to pursue dancing. She wasn’t there long until she became a part of the very talented and very popular dance crew “Fanny Pak”, competing with the crew on season 2 of America’s Best Dance Crew.

I absolutely loved talking to Megan, she is an amazing person and a brilliant dancer, and I absolutely loved writing up a story about a dancer whose been on an extremely popular television show that I watch!

Reporters will always talk and reflect on who some of their best interviews were with and when I talk about mine I will say that early on, while I was still in school, I got a chance to interview this incredible dancer from Fanny Pak and it ended up being the first article I ever got published in the Edmonton Journal! :)

So again the link to it from the paper (online version) is here: HERE!

And here it is for this blog’s sake:

Dance Crew star returns to Alberta
Calgary woman a hit on reality TV

Megan Lawson of Fanny Pak

An Alberta dancer from the popular U.S. dance crew Fanny Pak is performing Thursday as the hit MTV show America’s Best Dance Crew brings its live tour to Edmonton.

Megan Lawson, 23, who grew up in Calgary, will be back in Alberta after a week of performing and meeting fans in cities across Canada, and after finishing a 25-city live tour across the U.S. last month. The tour show includes Lawson’s Fanny Pak, along with three other top crews from the show’s second season. Several Edmonton dance crews will also perform as openers.

“I’m so excited. We’re doing new stuff. … It’s going to be awesome,” Lawson said. “We’ll do a few pieces that we did on the show so people can get excited for that, but for our own sanity we had to do some new stuff.”

Lawson, who trained in tap, jazz, ballet, contemporary and hip-hop, left Alberta only a year and a half ago to go to Los Angeles to pursue a dance career. She calls L.A. the “epicentre of the dance industry.”

As a Canadian dancer, she felt the need to work even harder to make it in L.A.

“Because there is so much competition, it’s very easy to get discouraged. You try not to compare yourself to others. You’ve got to keep going no matter what.”

Lawson shot to stardom this past summer when she and six of her friends formed Fanny Pak to compete on the reality TV dance show America’s Best Dance Crew. She is the only Canadian in the crew.

Fanny Pak was praised each week for their innovative and creative dance style and routines. They garnered legions of supportive fans, and were crowned the third best dance crew.

“I’m doing everything that I had hoped to do coming here (to L.A.), performing, travelling … . It’s so much better than what I ever expected in such a short time. That’s the power of TV. It’s so crazy.”

Now that Lawson has achieved success as a dancer, she hopes to inspire more Canadian dancers to break out of their comfort zone and try to make it in the industry.

“There are actually a lot of Canadian dancers in L.A. but not nearly enough because they say it’s a struggle. It’s expensive. I hope to inspire people to come, to know that it is possible to make dance a career and make something of it, whatever it be — in music videos or tours or movies, commercials, or in a random dance crew.”

Lawson said choreographers and other dancers in L.A. often comment on how talented the Canadians are. “That’s probably because the ones who really want it are the ones who make it out (here) — the ones who are fighting for it.”

Lawson said Fanny Pak sneakers will be released at the end of the month. A Fanny Pak clothing line is also on its way, along with more touring plans and maybe another TV gig.

“We’re going to try hopefully to do a tour of Europe and a tour of Asia with a few of the other crews,” she said. And what’s next beyond that? More dancing, teaching and performing, but Lawson doesn’t like to plan too much.

“You never want to make plans because they always change. You’ve just got to go with the flow.”

DANCE PREVIEW

Best Dance Crew Tour
Crews: Fanny Pak, Sup3r Crew, Supreme Soul, SoReal Cru
When: Thursday at 8 p.m.
Where: Edmonton Event Centre, 8882 170th St.
Tickets: $41.95 plus surcharges through Ticketmaster,
780-451-8000

As a side note, I went to the ABDC show and met Megan and Matt Cady (also from the crew) afterwards, here are some shots from the show (the actual performance photos are shoddy quality because I actually just screencaptured them from the video I took):

Me with Matt & Megan
Fanny Pak, December 18 2008

All in all, it was a great experience and I’d do it all again in a heartbeat!

Also, can you tell yet that I love dancers, dancing, writing about, watching, and listening to people talk about dance? :)

Linda

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