Girls Attend Dance Class — Their Mother Jumps In On Routine And Steals The Show

Jul 08, 2021

Phil Wright is a choreographer living in L.A who came up with an amazing idea. He thought that it would be wonderful to have a dance class for adults and children. Normally, dance instructors separate the classes by age. Phil had no clue if his idea would work out. But it turned out that parents and children alike were just waiting for the opportunity to share a fun time on the dance floor, as this video from 2017 went on to show.

Originally born in Miami, Phil Wright fell in love with dancing at an early age and moved to Los Angeles in 2013 to pursue his dream of a career in dance. He had started dancing at the age of nine and went on to train in several different dance styles, including hip-hop, African and contemporary dance. He currently lives in L.A. along with his wife and newborn daughter.

Before Wright started his parent-child class, he used to choreograph routines for artists like Chayanne, Pitbull, Will Smith, and Nicki Minaj. His one dream was to spread his passion and love of dance with students around the world, reports Playground LA. He also has quite the social media presence, sporting a YouTube channel with more than 1 million subscribers so far and an Instagram account with more than 300k subscribers. He has also been nominated for The Shorty Wards 2021 - a special digital award recognizing the best social media accounts to be found on the web.

For most of his classes, the parents were thrilled to leave their child and take an hour-long break. Wright was not sure if the parents would give up that alone time to dance with their children. To his surprise, all of the parents wanted to take part in a parent-child class. He was even more surprised when videos of that class went viral.
The parent-child class began practicing together with the Earth, Wind & Fire song Let's Groove. Soon, it was time to record their performance. Everyone was nervous before the big moment. They had no clue if the performance would be an amazing success or a complete dud.

The day of the performance arrived. To everyone's amazement, the dance was completely flawless. They hit every move in the choreography without a problem. As they danced, Wright watched them with a sense of pride. He had spent weeks teaching them the routine, and they had exceeded his wildest expectations. You can see in the video at the end of the article just how amazing the dance routine turned out to be.

The video took the internet by storm shortly after it was posted. By now, it has garnered more than 17 million views in total. People all over the world enjoyed seeing these parents and their kids have fun while dancing together. Something like this was exactly what Wright had hoped to inspire when he first started his Parent Jam classes, he explained in an interview with Afterbuzz TV.

And all those millions of views brought a lot of attention to the choreographer and dancer. Media sites reported on the viral video, spreading it further and further, and soon it had reached the eyes and ears of some very important people.

In 2019, Wright appeared as a guest on The Ellen Show to talk about his passion for dancing, his idea for a shared parent-children class and something new and exciting. It turned out that some of the people who had seen his video were producers at Disney. Wright explained how it all came to pass in an interview with World of Dance Fitness:

"I was reached out to by Irene Dreayer; she produced Sister, Sister, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, and she came across my video on Facebook — it was actually an article written up on The Parent Jam — and she forwarded it to me and then wanted to meet up with me. We met up, started talking, and negotiating, and she pitched the idea of turning my class into a TV show, and then from there, she connected me with associates within Disney, and we made our pitch and here we are."

In November 2019, the Disney Fam Jam started recording. This new show is the first competitive family dancing show for Disney. The underlying concept is pretty simple: two families are invited to participate in a dance-off against each other. The families create choreographies together with Wright himself who talks with them about what dancing means in their lives as a family while show hosts Ariel Martin and Trevor Tordjman moderate.

In the end, the families' performance will be judged by the studio audience themselves. The first place earns the family not only the Disney Fam Jam Trophy, but also a $10.000 price, with the runner-up going home with $2.500 as well. This means there are no true losers on the Disney Fam Jam, which underscores the positive spirit the show tries to promote.

The show started airing in February 2020 and kept airing all year long, with the so far last episode being broadcast on December 4th. Phil Wright is still involved in the production and ecstatic to be given this opportunity. As he explains in the Afterbuzz TV interview, Wright wanted to travel the world and bring families together via the world of dance. Since this has become much more challenging if not impossible over the year 2020, he is especially grateful for the wonderful opportunity this TV show represents. 

He describes his experience with producing the show as very positive in an interview with World of Dance Fitness:

"Absolutely amazing! Meeting new people and venturing off into the TV world really has been a pretty incredible experience. [...] The experience has been great. I think we were actually lucky in a sense because we had a choice to pick from several production companies to run with it and I think we lucked up with Matador because they were experienced with doing competition shows and dance reality."

The show is set to go on, and we hope Wright achieves exactly what he hopes to do:
"My only goal for The Parent Jam is to inspire people around the world and realize that family is first and that telling each other we love each other while we’re still here is really important. Dancing is just the tool for us to get together, but after that, it’s all about family, connecting and learning more about one another."

What do you think of this parent-child dance? If you thought that this video was wonderful to watch, help your friends get in the groove by telling them about this video!