Jack Chambers has found more dancing opportunities at home than abroad, writes Karen van Ulzen.
HER MAJESTY’S Theatre in Melbourne is surely what everyone imagines backstage at a theatre to be. The maze of narrow corridors, the walls papered in posters and cobwebbed with the texta autographs of the many artists who have performed there, the cozy dressing rooms with their mirrors fringed by lightbulbs. Jack Chambers’ mirror is plastered with photos of friends and family, like the mirrors of performers in theatres all over the world. He is here performing the role of Cosmo Brown in the Melbourne season of Singin’ in the Rain.
Singin’ in the Rain is a significant musical for Chambers. He credits it with being the show that set him on his path into musical theatre. He has loved the movie from when he was a child, and at the age of 10 made his debut in the role of the young Cosmo (a junior role not in the current production) in an amateur production in his hometown of Brisbane by Ocean Theatre Company. The part was small but the impact was huge. “The show had a stellar cast,” he says, “and the rest of the time I would be in the wings watching everything they did, copying, and at interval performing their numbers for them in their dressing rooms! I just loved being in that atmosphere and seeing how everything worked.”
Jack Chambers seems to have been born with dancing feet. He has old film footage of his toddler self dancing in nappies. “My sisters danced, and so I copied them. They take the credit now for making me a dancer!” He started training officially at the age of three at the Julie-ann Lucas Dance school, where he stayed till he was 17, learning all styles, taking his CSTD exams and revelling in the supportive, family atmosphere...
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