For a crew that has never shown its faces onstage, the members of Jabbawockeez have become some of the most recognizable entertainers in Las Vegas. Sixteen years into the troupe’s run on the Strip, those blank white masks are as familiar as the bronze lion out front of MGM Grand, its current home.
FREQNCY, the crew’s latest production, opened at the Jabbawockeez Theater last October. It’s built around a cosmic idea, that everything in the universe (people included) vibrates at its own frequency, and those frequencies tie us together. That translates to 75 minutes of some of the most inventive dance moves on the Strip.
The Jabbas are a study in anachronism. They seem to come from the distant past and the far-off future at the same time. One minute, the masks and white gloves channel the pantomimes of an old vaudeville stage. The next, lasers shoot from stage to ceiling, your seat rumbles beneath you, and those same blank faces look like androids beamed in from a century ahead.
The evening’s soundtrack is the ultimate playlist, spanning hip-hop, R&B, rock, EDM and pop. LED imagery washes over the stage as the dancers pop, lock, tumble, flip and drop into head spins, then snap right back into formation. (Gravity, apparently, is optional.) The disco sequence is the crowd favorite, and for good reason. The crew slips into pastel ’70s dance suits and grooves to Michael Jackson and Sister Sledge, and suddenly everyone in the room wants to go find a roller rink.
Of course, it’s not a Vegas show without a little audience participation. Dancers wade into the aisles with cameras, putting theatergoers up on the big screen. On a recent night, one lucky kid was pulled onstage for a basketball shootout while a Jabba contorted himself into the backboard and rim, with “Whoomp! (There It Is)” blasting overhead. Another volunteer was swept into a romantic interlude as several dancers vied for her affection (she did not seem to mind). It’s goofy and sweet, and the whole room eats it up.
That playfulness runs all the way back to the group’s beginning. In 2003, Kevin “KB” Brewer and Joe “Punkee” Larot rounded up friends in San Diego who shared their outlook on dance and life. Larot borrowed the name from Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky,” whose dragonlike monster makes a fitting namesake for a crew that would rather be glimpsed than known. The masks came early, too: first ski masks and ninja masks, then silver robot-looking ones, before the crew settled on the plain white plastic kind you can still pick up in any Halloween shop. The idea was unity through anonymity, with no leader, no star and no face to fixate on.
Winning the first season of MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew in 2008 made them famous. Next came Vegas. In 2010, they opened MUS.I.C. at MGM Grand’s Hollywood Theater and became the first dance crew to headline on the Strip. Stints at the Monte Carlo and Luxor followed before JREAMZ brought them back to MGM Grand in 2015. TIMELESS came next, and now FREQNCY carries the torch.
The masks haven’t changed in 16 years, and they don’t need to. Somewhere between the vaudeville stage and the space age, the Jabbawockeez troupe found a frequency all its own. And we’re more than happy to tune in.
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