In a new interview with After Elton, So You Think You Can Dance alum & choreographer, Travis Wall talks about his work as a choreographer on So You Think You Can Dance, his new boyfriend, and his upcoming reality show. Read it here.
Travis has been dating Dom Palange for the past 3 months. It caused quite a stir when Travis & Dom began tweeting each other little love messages! It’s his 1st boyfriend in 5 years. “This is my first like actual boyfriend and actual relationship. And someone I’m actually in love with, so it’s pretty exciting!” says Travis. Does this mean he’s “out” now?
“I’ve never made a big statement like, “Oh I’m gay.” It’s like if you know you know, and I’ve never been afraid to not say something on Twitter. So I didn’t even realize the impact of me like just saying “I miss you, I love you” on Twitter and then people are saying that I came out. [laughs] Well, I guess I came out.”
On how tough it is for gay dancers to compete for votes on SYTYCD:
When I was 18 and on the show it was very stressful to find the balance of being yourself and coming across in an authentic way. Honestly, the way I’ve always been with my friends… I’m not considered to be very flamboyant or over the top… [laughs] I mean, I watch more sports than any of my straight friends do…. so I don’t have such a hard time finding chemistry. Basically, when I’m dancing I feel like I can have chemistry with anyone I dance with.
I felt like the only time it was a little stressful was maybe when they interviewed me or… I don’t know… I never had to put on a front like that, but it’s true that I wanted to be in the top ten, and I wanted to go all the way closer to the top, and maybe it’s not necessary to come out and talk about that stuff when it’s a dance competition. It was me dancing, and maybe that’s all you needed to know.
Also, Travis has a new reality show in the works:
“The show is about me and three of my best friends. Two of them are straight and me and Nick are gay, and it’s the four of us living in a house together, and I think we’re calling it “Kings of Dance.” We’re like the four new up-and-coming choreographers, and we all work together, and it’s sort of unheard of the camaraderie we have. You know it’s a dog-eat-dog world as a choreographer, but the four of us are starting a dance company together.
Everyone [in television] is trying to touch on the dance scene and show what dancers actually do. And they’ve gotten it wrong. And we wanted to show it right.
We’re obviously having like a Glee moment every show, where there will be a dance number at the end of it, and it’s like showing the process, lifting the curtain on how choreographers create a piece and how we live together.
I’ve known all these guys since I was like nine-years-old, so we fight like brothers and we live like brothers and we grow beside each other, and you see relationships that happen outside of the four of us. There’s always people over at our house. We have a huge house. It’s like a dance brothel.
When given the opportunity to dis SYTCD creator and executive producer, Nigel Lythgoe, Travis Wall would not.
As much as sometimes people want to disagree with what he says, if they could kind of just take a step back and look at what he’s done for dance. I mean, before So You Think You Can Dance the only dance show out there was Dancing with the Stars, and that’s all ballroom.
So he gave something that I do a light. Not only me, but it put my style, contemporary, on the map. No one knew what that was in America. I mean, before this show if you’d asked anyone in like Idaho about contemporary dance, they would have gone, “What?”
So it completely just made it one of the most talked about, most trending things ever. So it’s amazing. It’s given me a job. And it’s also given me a platform to grow on. I thank Nigel for that every day.
The talented choreographer is set to choreograph for SYTYCD Season 8 the top eight, the top six, and then, hopefully, for the finale.
