In a brightly lit sushi bar in central Sydney, Travers Ross is busy adding wasabi to each piece of sushi before he eats it. He’s wearing his signature trilby hat, and part of an elaborate tattoo featuring his surname “Ross” can be seen at the V-neck of his shirt. Everything about dance choreographer Travers Ross screams creativity. And it’s catching on. A pioneer of dance with an obvious passion for what he does, these days his plate is full, as both a performer and a choreographer, most famously for the television dance phenomenon, So You Think You Can Dance, Australia.

“Dance has been my life, my work, my business, my hobby.”

He also owns seven dance companies, including Utopian Dream, a dance festival featuring international choreographers, and Fly Fresh, a touring company with guest choreographers from dance capitals such as LA and New York. Yet he is more than willing to take the time to sit back and have a chat about growing up as a male dancer, his job, and his philosophies about dance.

Travers has always danced to his own tune. Dancing from a young age at his mother’s Coffs Harbour dance school, he trained in all forms of dance from tap, to jazz, ballet, and contemporary.
“But the way I developed my style was because my Mum, she would always tell me what to do, like point my toes and stuff like that, so I’d always do the opposite because I found my Mum a nag,” he explained, laughing, and then added “I love her to death.”

Not that the years of technical training haven’t come in handy.

“I use everything. Every element of dance that I’ve ever done.” Even ballet?

“Yeah I use it within my dance, for sure.”

Travers started choreographing his own solos at the age of nine or ten (“I just started feeling it aye, just wanting to do my own thing”), and was tutoring other students by age twelve.
“I was kinda like the big fish…I had no fear of being creative, because there was no competition.”

But it was not all smooth sailing for Travers. In a report done by Australian Story, Julie Ross, Travers’ mother, explained: “On going to high school, things really changed. He joined a musical at the school and had a pretty terrible experience because he had to wear make-up in the show and, because of that, he was bullied in the playground.”

The fact that Travers’ other interests included soccer, footy, and surfing made no difference, and he was almost driven to quit dancing altogether. It took the male dance festival Stamping ground to change his mind for good.

“The most influence I’ve ever had from anywhere in my life is from that festival. Learning so many different styles in sixteen days, with men from all around the world, coming together to bond, and share the experience of dance you know? It was like sport… they were just dudes having a good time… It made me feel like a boy, like a man.”

Travers has never looked back. Although his main genre is hip hop, he uses influences from other genres to develop a unique style that is “as creative and expressive as [it can be]… it adds that new, fresh vibe to my work.” As he continues to gain recognition, Travers has had the opportunity to collaborate with such artists as Richard “Swoop” Whitebear (“the godfather of dance, we call him”), who has choreographed for some of the biggest commercial artists in the industry, including the Backstreet Boys, Madonna, and Jennifer Lopez. He has also trained with Dave Scott, whose work includes choreographing for the movies Stomp the Yard, and Step Up 2: The Streets. His girlfriend, Lamb, who was also one of the top twenty contestants of series two of So You Think You Can Dance, Australia, says Travers has a “natural ability to create. [He] has something special that not many people are gifted with in this day and age…This is one man who will make it big.”

Now a major player in Australia’s dancing industry, Travers comes from humble beginnings. His first dance school was a small one in Coffs Harbour aimed at getting guys to dance, a key ambition of Travers’. He began by teaching them to break dance.

“That was my lure…Within months I had them doing ballet. They realised that to make them a better break dancer, they had to learn other dance styles to complement that.”
Soon after he formed his company Groovelock which, once it started productions and gigs, travelled all along the holiday coast, gaining notice for itself and an invitation to perform in a Melbourne dance festival.

“That’s when it all took off,” Travers explains.

Since then Travers’ choreography has featuring in film clips, commercials, a Bollywood movie, dance festivals, and of course So You Think You Can Dance, Australia, where he was able to work alongside highly respected choreographers, including Jason Gilkinson “who is like, my idol.”

In addition to studying as far abroad as Brazil and the United States, Travers travels a lot to learn from as many dance styles as he can.

“I believe in taking from every dance style there is on this earth, and to have limitless movement… that’s a professional dancer at their best.”

It’s Travers’ love for sharing dance, and growing as a dancer that is behind an upcoming project he will undertake through Beyond Empathy, which provides opportunities for disadvantaged youth to take part in artistic expression like dance, film, theatre, music, digital and mixed media, and visual arts. Travers and Lamb will travel to Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory to film a video clip with the local indigenous youth.

“We want kids to wanna come and learn, because it’s culture, you know? It’s dance, it’s freedom of the soul… I find country kids…they’re the ones that I find are the strongest dancers… from areas where dance hardly exists.”

And Travers is just as excited to learn from them in return. In a country where the indigenous culture was originally repressed, and our contemporary culture is overpowered by commercial media, Travers insists that it is important to learn as much about different customs, including dance, as possible.

“Working with the aboriginals up there, they’ve just got this natural soul and tradition…you just can’t compete. It’s just complete, organic, real…I don’t think we support our dance aboriginal culture enough.”

At various times in his life, Travers has danced alongside elders to learn a style that is completely unique. He has even learned to play the didgeridoo.

“It’s like anything, like, you wanna go learn and expand on it. I just like to expand on my movement… that’s true fresh movement.”

He spoke fervently about Australian communities supporting young dancers, especially in remote areas, who are “disadvantaged, like, unable to get all the stuff city kids get or the country kids even get…we’re trying to give them a good head space, and a new option.”

Travers’ ambition, broad-minded approach to dance, and dedication to teaching what he loves to anyone willing to learn, means we can expect great things to come from Travers in the future. As Lamb said, “We are lucky as a country to claim someone with such a huge vision for our dance community.”

One thing is for sure: once a big fish in a small town, Travers Ross is now making a splash in the dancing industry, both in Australia and worldwide.