TROY JANSEN
Please describe your current dancing background.
Thank you so much for interviewing me for this project! I am currently the director and co-owner of the Jansen Dance Project (JDP) with my beautiful wife Kristen Best-Jansen. I teach all the tap classes and jazz fundamentals for the middle school division. I also oversee programming and maintenance for the business. I am on the faculty for Florida Southern College (FSC) in Lakeland where I teach tap for the musical theater department. Last but not least, I am a proud parent of 3 amazing children.
That's so sweet! Do all your children dance?
Actually 2 of the 3 are dancers, but our youngest Jon is an enigma. Our oldest Julia ran the ballet company at Princeton University for two and a half years. She's a pure bunhead, loves the dance form, and is a beautiful dancer. Jacqueline, who is 20, is the triple threat kid. She can sing, act, and dance all styles really well! Jacqueline recently performed in the musical ‘Pippin’ at the University of Florida. She just loves the arts. Last but not least, Jon is our third grade Peanuts character. He has a beautiful singing voice and has his own vibe. He has promised me that starting this month he will be taking my tap class. I am going to do my best to teach him everything I know.
It seems like you passed your passion for dance to your children! How did you start dancing?
I grew up in Westbury on Long Island, NY. My mom decided to sign my younger sister Tracy and I for dance when we were 3 and 5 years old respectively. At the time my mom said, "I am signing you up for tap class to keep you out of trouble." Upon arrival I saw that I was the only boy in my sister's classes, so I boycotted taking the class. However, since my mom had already paid for the lessons she asked the dance teacher if I could sit and watch the class. I spent that first full year just watching my sister's dance class. Then when I turned 6 my mom said, "I am signing you up again for tap to keep you out of trouble." I got my tap shoes, and that year my dance teacher, Ms. Camille Sanfilippo, started a boys class containing 12 sibling boys. I give her props for having the courage to listen to a bunch of boys in tap shoes! Then, I started taking classes with the boys which became a mixed class 2 years later. As I grew older, I started taking more dance classes. When I became 12, I gave up baseball to take jazz class. When I entered high school I gave up soccer to take ballet class because I realized that if I wanted to pursue dance in greater detail I needed to be in ballet class. Furthermore, as I was growing up in NY, I was inspired by attending various professional productions, and I realized I wanted to do that, which meant I needed to take more dance classes. I spent most of my high school years catching up for my lack of ballet training. Particularly the last 3 years of high school I spent a lot of time training in preparation for getting a job after high school.
How do you think you have grown as a dancer?
My mom was right about dance keeping me out of trouble. Dancing makes you a better human, which I never thought of when I was younger. My intention coming out of high school was to get a job in dancing and to continue on that path. I would say yes to every opportunity that came my way, most of which were unpaid. However, those opportunities lead to other opportunities, which lead me to craft a small career. Dance has kept me out of trouble, made me a better person, and allowed me to meet a lot of people along the way in different community settings. I was brought up by my mom. She taught me to be humble, hard working, and passionate. I was taught honor and dignity. If I said yes to something, I was taught to make sure I follow through with it. Dancing also gives you better time management skills, a sense of purpose, and a healthier life. Scientifically, it has been proven that moving through space will keep you healthier short-term and long-term. About 20+ years ago I had said that I wanted to be a senior citizen tap dancer, and I am on my way! (chuckles) One day I am going to be 72 and still in my tap shoes dancing away. I am 20 years out from getting my wish, but I look forward to many more years of hanging out with young people and being inspired. Whether it is the kindergarten kids or the pre-professional students that want to try dance as a career, I am very passionate about both. I have had the privilege of living it, so now is my time to give it.
Did you have any specific role models growing up?
First and foremost was my mom. Then my dance teacher Camille and her partner. I had a very female-dominated upbringing which was necessary because it kept me in check. I tell all the K-6 boys that when they are teenagers they will thank me because they are going to be around all these beautiful young people and will think, "Wow, am I lucky!" Not only that, but they will get to hang out, create, move through space, act, do lifts, and it'll be awesome! Role models from afar include Gene Kelly. Singin' in the Rain was my favorite movie when I was young. The other male dancers I saw on television growing up in the 70's and early 80's seemed a bit effeminate, but it wasn't what I wanted to be. I liked to play sports, but I also liked to be in the dance studio. When I saw Gene Kelly performing, he had that gritty-athletic movement quality to him. He could tap, he was a good ballet dancer, he was charismatic, and he was around beautiful women all the time. I was like, "Wow this is amazing. I could definitely do this!" When I became more passionate about the craft, my role models included tap artist Gregory Hines. From afar, he inspired me to dig deeper and to go where these tap artists were. So I started going to these tap events to meet these elder states people while they were still here. Whether it was taking their class, having conversations with them, or hanging out at the bar with these artists, along the way I have met many people who were inspirational.
A life changing moment for me as a tap dancer was in 1989. I was already dancing professionally in a dinner theater show in New Jersey. My sister had gotten tickets to the airing of a PBS show called Tap Dancing in America, a documentary special on the art of tap dancing. Unfortunately, I had a night job so I was unable to attend, but my sister and her friend went. All the tap dancers I talked about ended up being there! When the show aired, I realized that I wanted to be a concert tap dance artist. I don't want to sing, I'm not a singer. I don't want to act, I'm not an actor. Sure dancers act through their movements, but I didn’t want to speak on stage. I just wanted to be in my tap shoes. Savion Glover was
the upcoming wonder kid of tap, and he now carries the mantle in America. He is definitely a driving force. At the time, there were so many great tap artists including Brenda Bufalino Director of the American Tap Dance Orchestra, Sarah Petronio in France, Lynn Dally in California with the Jazz Tap Ensemble, Dianne Walker in Boston and Jane Goldberg in NYC, all of whom studied with Tap legends. Lots of great men and women were doing cool things in tap, both on broadway and in concert style. That PBS special had encapsulated everything. Even though I was training numerous disciplines to keep my job opportunities open, I considered myself a tap dancer.
Was it a love at first sight kind of thing or did your love for tap grow over time?
It went from my mom signing me up to stay out of trouble to a habit. Eventually that habit turned into a career. One day when I was a senior in high school my friends asked me, "What are you going to do in college?" I told them, "I'm going to dance...I'm going to be a dancer!" I can recall one more time where I said that I was going to be a dancer was in middle school. In English class we had to write a 7th grade report on what we wanted to be when we grew up. I had narrowed it down to a forest ranger or tap dancer. I wanted to be far away from everybody else in the middle of nowhere or in my tap shoes. Either option sounded great to me, but I had to decide which one I could say in front of the class. I decided to say that I wanted to be a tap dancer when I grow up, which made me a target in middle school. The next couple years were just awful as a male dancer, but thankfully I had my circle of friends come to my aid. They said that they loved the fact that I tap dance. When 9th grade came along they saw all the cute women hanging around me and realized that it was a good place to be. While my guy friends were hanging out on the field, I got to hang out with these cool dance artists. 7th grade and senior year were the two times I had said I wanted to be a dancer, and I kept going from there. I am blessed to have had minimal injuries. I am very joyful to be waking up each day. I tell my kids and students that every day is a gift which is why they call it the present, so let's make the most of it! It really is a gift to be an artist.
What was the dance scene like in New York?
New York is definitely the mecca for dance in the United States. You get to see the best of the best in all dance styles. There is a confluence of humanity, especially in the summer when all these international dance students want to come hang out. It was a great time to be a young dancer in New York. In 1984 the Broadway Dance Center opened in Manhattan, which became, and is still, a main dance hub in the area. In my senior year, I asked my mom if I could take the train and see these dance artists, and she was okay with me skipping! I ended up doing it more often than I probably should have, but I did graduate from high school so you can definitely do it all. I spent a lot of time with different dance teachers. I met a jazz artist named Frank Hatchett who taught a style called the "VOP." It was a combination of jazz technique, street dance, and west African dance. It was a very cool jazz dance style. Being exposed to that in 1984 & 1985, I realized that I needed to train more and jump into the audition pool to see what happens. New York has always been vibrant. It is home to the art of Hip Hop. It has the best ballet companies, the best modern companies, the best tap companies, the best places to see shows, and lots of wonderful things when it comes to dance. I couldn't get enough, but I also didn't have enough time and financial resources to be there. Coming out of high school I was trying to juggle going to college, dancing professionally, and waiting tables. There is only so much you can do, but in surrounding yourself with as much professional dance artistry as possible, that alone starts to translate. When you are around greatness, a little bit of that starts to rub off on you. Then you start to sense that you have a greater sense of purpose because you have seen greatness, or you are standing next to greatness, or you are talking to somebody that is great. They are all positive human beings, so I carried that positivity back with me to my local dance studio, which carried with me throughout my life.
From New York did you come straight down to Florida?
No. I had a friend that lived in Columbus, Ohio. She had reached out to me saying that she had seen a notice in the newspaper about the BalletMet Dance Company having an audition for their newly formed jazz company. That was great because company work is different than production/performance/show work for musical theaters. In a company you are generally not singing. However, in musical theater work, where I was picking up a lot of my work, you had to sing/act/dance. I thought I did one really well, but the other two were meek or not good at all. I just happened to be the right height, look, or whatever else they needed. Also, it was a luxury being a male dance artist, because there were more opportunities for men to get their toe in the door. For that reason I had a lot of opportunities, but I also made sure to work hard to present whatever was asked of me as best as I could. When I heard of this opportunity to audition for JazzMet in Columbus, I took a plane to Columbus which arrived late causing me to miss the audition. The jazz director said, "I am so sorry, the audition just concluded. Is there any chance that you can come to my jazz class on Wednesday?" This meant that I had to stay in Columbus for a couple more days. Then, I contacted the dinner theater in New Jersey and asked for a few more days off so that I could stay in Columbus for the audition. Afterwards, I took the jazz class and the director goes, "Great. I'd love to have you in the company!"
Bingo.
I flew back on Thursday morning to New York, and I told my mom that I am moving to Columbus, Ohio. She asks, "Where is Ohio?" My mom was from Sweden so she did not know where it was. Then she asked how long I was going to be there, and I told her that I didn't know, but I am going there for a dance company job. I put everything I owned in the back of the car that my mom let me have. However, the mechanic said that the car was a one way ticket. It would get me to Ohio, but not get me back. Then, I took the car and arrived in Columbus on Friday night, and on Saturday I started rehearsal. On Sunday, I went up the director and asked if there were any contracts we needed to sign for the company. It was then she mentioned that it was an unpaid company. In a nutshell, I was dancing professionally in a dinner theater show in New York, but I left and arrived at Central Ohio with an unpaid job.
What did you do?
I couldn't drive home because the car wouldn't make it, and I did not have the financial resources for such a drive. Then I contacted the restaurant I connected to in New York. I asked if I could work for their restaurant in Columbus, which they agreed upon. I toughed it out and made very little money waiting tables, but I said I'll give it a few months to see what happens. In the first few months John McFall, the director of BalletMet, approached me after a show we did and said, "I'd like to hire you to be in the ballet company. I like the way you dance." My first question was, "Does it pay? Because the gig I have doesn't pay." He said that it did pay, however, he could not put me on contract until the end of the season which would be in the summer. Thankfully, I met and fell in love with Kristen. I ended up taking a part time job teaching dance at a local dance studio, kept waiting tables, and ended up making it work! Then I was offered a ballet company contract and danced with BalletMet from 1990-1995. Kristen and I were married in 1991 and danced with JazzMet Co., which was a community based ensemble, until funding was allocated to make the company a professional Jazz Ensemble. They kept 7 of us, which thankfully included my wife and I. Now I had a ballet company and a jazz company contract. At the same time BalletMet was looking for a tap instructor for their dance academy. I auditioned for that position and became the tap teacher and then the tap director. I was asked to create the Tap syllabus for the school. I had a very vibrant and wonderful 6 seasons in Ohio. Columbus is a great city with a very cool, eclectic and supportive arts community.
In 1994, BalletMet Director, John McFall went on to direct the Atlanta Ballet Company, and the funding for JazzMet was not going to be allocated to us, so the Jazz company was folded by the board of BalletMet. I also knew that I wasn’t a great ballet dancer, and with a new director coming in the chances of being hired were not going to be good. Therefore, my wife and I began thinking of other options. We were both being offered to dance in different cities, but we wanted to be together. We decided to come to Tampa to visit family, and while we were down here Kristen and I had the idea of opening up a dance studio. My wife had grown up in her mom's dance studio, the Joan Lee Miller School of Dance, in Northeast Ohio, and understood the wonderful challenges that lied ahead. In 1995 we opened up our original space with our former partner for 6 seasons. In 2001, my mother-in-law needed help with her dance studio back in Northeast Ohio. We had also come to a crossroads with our business, so we decided to go back and help her out. We were back in Northeast Ohio for 2 years where we helped to close my mother-in-law's studio after 42 years of operation. I was also teaching tap and jazz at Youngstown State University for a year. During this time in Ohio, we were thinking about going back to Tampa because both girls were born there (I had 2 kids at the time), and it was such a vibrant spot for us. We came back to Tampa and decided to create a more joyful, loving, and children-friendly space. In 2003 we opened up the Children's Dance Workshop in Tampa, which became the Jansen Dance Project (JDP) in 2007.
What do you think makes your dance school unique?
In the last 16 years, I feel like we have become a jewel box example of a very fun, loving, and compassionate fine arts facility. There are young people from preschool to 5th grade who delve into ballet, tap, jazz, modern, musical theater, hip hop, acrobatics, and yoga (and hopefully Indian dance soon). On the other side we have become this high school/college preparatory space. We started out with 2 daughters who were 5 and 3 years of age and accepted other children like our own. 16 years later we have many kids wanting to pursue the arts as their career. Right now about 50% of the kids are in middle and high school and are very passionate about their craft whether its dance or theater, and the other 50% are young people trying to navigate their experiences of where they would like to be. The teachers in the building love young people and are selflessly sharing their passion for their craft. There are ballet instructors, jazz instructors (including my wife and I), and the musical theater faculty. It's really about sharing what we love with young people. We also have an open door policy. We want our students to experience the arts anywhere. We tell them to go train and bring back more passion and a better sense of purpose to our classroom. Our students know that they do not have to ask for permission to go to workshop classes or to take class at a dance studio. This helps us develop the student further. We are really preparing these kids for the stage of life. It's not only training and creating young artists, but also helping develop better humans through art. Though the majority of the people that come to our building may not pursue the arts professionally, we give everyone the tools so they can help contribute to our community and become better people. We want better advocates to the arts. I want the kids that leave JDP to say that they loved their experience and want to support the arts. I want them to be the ones to write the checks to the foundation, bring their children to the ballet or show, enroll them in a class to train in, and not turn a blind eye to the arts when they become adults. We need greater support for the arts. My mission is to create better humans through art.
What are your future plans for JDP?
The immediate plan is for putting more emphasis on our Collective Soles Youth Ensemble as an outreach performance vehicle. That way our middle and high school students participating in the vehicle can be more proactively helping our community out.
Transitionally, I want to create a black box space in our larger studio for our students to train and get more hands on time on the stage with more lights and sound and actually work the productions. I want students to train from a technical standpoint in regards to running sound, lights, and creating specific looks. We want to give them more training prior to college so that they have more job opportunities when they arrive to the university setting. They can potentially get to a theater and start working immediately. In transitioning the studio to a black box, other members of the community can also utilize it.
I would also like to expand the offerings of the K-5 programming to make it even more vibrant this year. For example, we have added a vocal technique class for students in grades K-5. I want to also include more international dance styles as well.
That sounds so exciting! What advice would you want to give someone beginning to pursue dance as a career?
We ask students entering high school what they would like to do with their gifts. Some students have answers, and some students don't. For those that don't have answers, we give them recommendations for maintaining their level or furthering their training. If they decide to pursue an area in the arts, we tell them what they need to consider. For kids who have an answer, we mentor and guide them in their first few years of high school on how to utilize their passion for serving their community or how to create a mission through movement. One of our high school students recently told me that she would like to offer classes for brownie troops as a mission for her Girl Scout troop. I told her that I would provide her space and have her be the young teacher for these brownie troops. I am so thrilled to be in a position to support someone with a space to use for community service.
Going into senior year of high school, we suggest to young people that if they are passionate about dance or theater, they don't need to necessarily major in the arts unless they are provided a scholarship to do so. Instead, students should consider double majoring as an artist and anything else that they are passionate about to remain well balanced and have greater stability as a young adult. When they finish their undergraduate degree, they can take a chance of being an artist because they also have a degree in something else. We try to help students figure out the "something else." We have professors come to the studio and have conversations with our students. We also have schools scouting our students to invite them to be a part of their program. Last year we had a couple of students who received full scholarships to go to college based on their skill sets as an artist, which is fabulous! We understand the trust and investment families make in us. We take the investments that parents make in time, money, and energy, very seriously for their child's arts enrichment experience. You may have a kid that walks in 3-5 years of age and 12 years later that kid is still at our school as a high school senior. What is that value? One, we will love/nurture them, and they are in a safe place to explore and become what they are supposed to be. Two, we are also going to assist in connecting them with other people outside of our building in the university setting so that they can have as much opportunities as possible. Three, we will use the facility to get them ready for that. For example, if they need to film pre-screen choreography for audition pieces or want to utilize our nonprofit collective arts soles group to help with their mission they can do so. We tell students to keep training hard, working hard, and being good humans. In addition, the high school students get opportunities to serve. If you are in a public school setting, volunteer hours need to be at 100 before graduation. Starting at 8th grade, our students are serving the community. As younger artists they are able to acquire hours in a positive way. We are able to show that the students are out in the community making a difference.
How are they serving the community via dance?
They are serving the community through dance, monologue, or even going somewhere like Metropolitan Ministries and helping with the food display, performing, and bagging food. We go to the shelter and provide a respite from the challenges people are facing. So if you come in as a polite, vibrant, and positive force, that alone changes lives. You can perform and give people a chance to escape from the stress and strife of life at the moment, which resonates even further. Staying connected is also very important. Having kids say, "Hey Mr. Jansen, I really appreciate you coming to my school today and talking about dance. I would really appreciate if you could come back!" I believe in the value to help and excite young people about education and being leaders.
I am very passionate about children's books as well. Every Friday I go to kindergarten classes and teach movement and show that when you pick up a book you can bring it to life as a dancer. You may not necessarily want to always read the books, but you can bring the pictures to life and move them. The children start moving and get to experience another way of looking at literature. It is important to be present as a positive adult and show kids that they have someone that will listen to them, help them, and be there for them.
My daughter Jacqueline will be taking over as director of the Youth Ensemble in January, and she is already on her way to be a greater missionary of the arts. She said, "Dad, we have to do more," and I agree! We have a mission through movement, and I am very proud and excited about being a part of this project.
I am so happy to hear that! Last question, is there anything else that you would like to share with the world?
We need art. It makes society better. We need to support and fund arts and education. We need to provide the very best education and arts experience to all young people. It will benefit our community and every community going forward. As those young people become adults there will be less stress and strife.
In my case personally it did save my life. My mom was right about it keeping me out of trouble, but it also provided for me. Being in the arts is a lifeline not for myself, but for others. I have seen students going through problems, and I believe that art has helped them. It is the very best thing about their day. I want them to know that we are here for them and that we love them. If they fall we will always pick them up. We will help guide them moving forward. If they ever need something, they can always reach out to us. I say don't email me (I won't look at them), but they can always text or call me. We need to continue funding education for the arts to the capacity that we can in every community.
Last but not least, please look out for one another, take care of each other, and pray for each other. Love what you do and do what you love. Thanks to Kristen, our children and all the young people who continue to be our greatest source of inspiration. Deep love and gratitude to my first dance teacher Camille Sanfilippo who passed away on January 1, 2020.