BACKGROUND DANCER STEPS UP TO LEAD IN FILM

Jenna Dewan stars opposite Channing Tatum in the dance movie, Step Up, and she talked about relating to and training for her challenging role. Keywords: Mari…

Jenna Dewan toured as a dancer on Sean Combs We Invented the Remix tour and Janet Jackson’s All For You World Tour. Stepping up from the background she is playing the lead dancer in the role of Nora in Step Up, the trained ballerina who falls for a street hip hop dancer played by Channing Tatum.

Even though Jenna is an experienced dancer she couldn’t avoid the injuries that came along with practicing the choreography, and lifts with Channing.

“Nora is me at 15 truly and I know Channing (Tatum) is Tyler to a T as well. I grew up technically trained to dance. I started at five and I had goals at 15. I knew that I wanted to go to L.A. and dance with artists. I knew it so I trained every night and was really gung ho about it. I missed out on a lot but it helped so I really related with that about her.”

Jenna also appeared in another dancing film, Take The Lead but she took off her jazz shoes to make the horror film The Grudge 2 coming out in October.rn

“The dance was pretty hard because we had a bunch of scenes that we had to work out together and mesh the two dance styles together with hip hop and ballet and trying to figure out some other way. And we both did all of our own dancing. We wanted to obviously and so that was having to learn how to partner together and do the lifts. It was very intensive. I was very hurt and I ended up hurting a rib and a foot but it was so worth it.”