Growing up in the Ottawa Valley of Ontario, Canada, Jon Pilatzke says he had two choices: "Hockey or something from the arts." He started dancing at the age of 4 because his brother Nathan, who was two years older, had started dancing at the age of 5. "And I had to be doing everything he was doing."
"Literally, it was just an ad in the paper that my mother saw: Lessons held weekly," Pilatzke remembers. Both brothers loved it, but by the time Jon was 9, he had picked up the fiddle, too -- "I had the tunes in my head already, so I thought that would be kind of cool, too" -- and the rest is stepdance history. Pilatzke was three-time winner of the Canadian Open Stepdancing Championships; appeared in Bowfire, a "virtuosic display" featuring 10 of Canada's best violinists from all different genres; and has toured for 15 years as a dancer with The Chieftains, most of that time with brother Nathan.
FAQ
The Step Crew
WHEN — 7:30 p.m. today
WHERE — ArcBest Corp. Performing Arts Center, 55 S. Seventh St. in Fort Smith
COST — $27-$30
INFO — 788-7300
"Through [The Chieftains] we started to see the international reactions to Irish dance and our style, Ottawa Valley dance. Japan, China, Sweden, Norway, everywhere people were going wild for this dancing," he says. "So we wanted to make a show of some kind about dance, because we had spent our whole careers popping up in the shows of musicians and really upping the energy level."
They put their heads together with Irish dancer Cara Butler, "went into a rehearsal studio for two weeks initially, and ideas just came pouring out of us," Pilatzke says. "We were amazed how fast some structure of a show came together."
The result, titled The Step Crew, brings together Irish dance, tap dance and Ottawa Valley stepdance.
"We went after the absolute cream-of-the-crop dancers, tracked down the dream team from all the musical geniuses we had worked with, and the show has just evolved from there over our nine-year existence," Pilatzke says.
-- Becca Martin-Brown
NAN What's Up on 09/16/2016