‘World of Dance’ makes its highly-anticipated return for season 4 on May 26. HL spoke EXCLUSIVELY with duo Jake & Chau about their rehearsal process for the show, meeting the judges, and more.
World of Dance is back for season 4 starting May 26. Jennifer Lopez, Derek Hough, and NE-YO are looking for the next great dance act once again. One of the Upper Division contemporary duos auditioning during the season 4 premiere is Jake & Chau. HollywoodLife got the EXCLUSIVE scoop from the duo ahead of their premiere audition. “We’ve known each other for about 5 years now. We just grew up dancing kind of against each other. We were in studios that would compete against each other. We were still friends and started dancing really with each other as a duo about 3 years ago,” Chau, 18, told HollywoodLife.
To prepare for World of Dance, Jake admitted that they had a “full month at least of hardcore rehearsing together.” Chau added that they practiced 5 days a week for just a one minute and 30-second piece. “It’s kind of stressful to prepare that long for something so short that has to be nearly perfect for the competition itself, so it was stressful, exciting, very long, and challenging,” Chau said.
World of Dance has had a number of contemporary duos on the show over the past 4 seasons. Jake & Chau pointed out what makes them a special pair. “One thing that’s pretty unique about us being a duo is our trust in our dance,” Chau revealed. “A bunch of our movements you’ll see on Tuesday are pretty trustworthy. There are moments where I can’t exactly see him and he can’t exactly see me to plan everything out. It’s kind of dangerous and risky, but we’re able to pull that off.”
Jake, 20, noted that starting out as friends gave them a “stronger connection than most duet pairs because I feel like we want to be together. We didn’t grow up at the same studio. We weren’t the same age where they just put us together, and we didn’t have a choice. It was something we wanted to do together as friends first. I think just starting from there, the connection was already strong enough as a duet because of our friendship.”
Another aspect of this duo that makes them unique is their height. “Chau is literally almost the same height as me. Usually, for a duet, choreographers choose partners where the girl is much shorter and the guy is much taller,” Jake said. “It tends to be a lot easier for the male to lift the girl in the air and do all these tricks and stuff. So for us, it was definitely a challenge of figuring out creative ways to pull tricks off or pull this off or any moment like that with each other because of our height. We definitely figured it out, and we’re proud of that.”
Contemporary duo Jake & Chau perform on ‘World of Dance’ season 4. (NBC)
The show is switching things up in season 4. When the dancers audition on the show, they’re actually going right into the Qualifiers. Jake said it was “definitely a crazy experience to walk into something that you had no idea what was going to happen… When they just throw it at us saying that the judges were going to be there, it was such a surreal moment to walk into.” Chau added: “There’s J.Lo, NE-YO, and Derek looking right at you looking so perfect and ready to watch you. That’s very nerve-wracking. So I do think that we were nervous at first for that first initial moment, but I think we pulled it together.” World of Dance airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on NBC.
Sourse: hollywoodlife.com
