FOLKESTONE DANCER SUMMER JAY JONES ON SACRIFICE, SETBACKS AND TOURING THE WORLD WITH RINA SAWAYAMA

Photo Credit: @amycook_photography

Photo Credit: @amycook_photography

Stepping out to perform on BBC primetime’s The Graham Norton Show, Folkestone dancer Summer Jay Jones (@summerjayjones) could scarcely believe her change in circumstances in just a matter of months.

As a key performer for rising pop sensation Rina Sawayama, Summer has travelled around the world on two album tours and starred in numerous music videos (including the five million-streamed This Hell) before the appearance on national TV.

“Even though we’re doing one number, it’s probably had more rehearsal, it’s slicker and you normally have two goes if you need them - the TV performances are still the most scary,” says Summer. “Because the recording of it will be there forever. And it’s a proper recording, it’s not like someone on their phone at the gig sort of thing with people in front of it, covering a mistake if you make one. There’s only a few people in the room, but it’s going to everyone!”

Having trained since the age of four, it could be argued that, 20 years on, Summer has reached the pinnacle of commercial dance - being paid to travel and do the thing she loves. But it could have all been very different.

“I was a slightly obnoxious kid,” she laughs. “I was that little girl that when you asked what I wanted to be when I grew up… it was ‘dancer’. It was this idea in my tiny head from as long as I can remember that it would be glamorous, with big stages and audiences. And even when I started to grow up and realise that it isn’t always that, I’d just fallen in love with it by then.”

“House parties? It was always ‘No, I’ve got dance’. It was never a question to me. I just knew that was what I wanted to do”

— Summer Jay Jones

Athletes in their own right, pro dancers need the dedication to the art form and the strength of mind to pass on parties, booze and teenage jaunts to give them the best opportunity to make it in an often-fleeting career.

“House parties? It was always ‘No, I’ve got dance’. It was never a question to me. I just knew that was what I wanted to do,” says Summer.

During her school years, Summer would often travel to London two or three times a week to attend a contemporary dance school.

“I started in normal local dance lessons like a lot of kids do. But then as my parents realised that I was serious about it, they were really supportive and just did everything they could to help get me into anything that I wanted to get into.

“I was training every day I could and just doing everything possible. When I look back at that, I’m like ‘How, how was I doing that?’ But as a kid I had that energy. And I didn’t want to give anything up. I was never pushed too much. It was always ‘Are you sure you want to do that? You need a break - are you OK?’. But I just always wanted it.”

With a plan to head into the commercial dance and musical theatre genres, the financial costs associated with getting to a top school were too great and it looked like a 16-year-old Summer would have to wait until she turned 18 and apply for student loans to get to a school of choice. A chance meeting at the Move It dance convention at the Excel centre saw Summer discover the brand-new Wilkes Academy of Performing Arts in Swindon and, after an audition, Summer was offered a place.

“At the time they were new and their fees were very low,” she says. “They wanted to build their reputation and so they wanted the best intake they could get. Within two months, I was in halls with a load of other 16-year-olds. It was a whirlwind, but I’m so grateful for it.”

Summer’s resolve was tested once again when the three-year course suddenly turned into four after an investigation into continuous hip pain revealed impingements on the ball and socket joints that had torn away cartilage over time.

“I had about a year where I couldn’t dance,” says Summer. “I had two operations, one on each hip. The same operation that Andy Murray has had. It was really hard and I did seriously consider whether I should carry on.

“It was a case of ‘If we don’t do these operations and we just give you some steroids and physio, you’d be able to have a life and be fine - but you can’t dance’. Or ‘We can do the operations and you have sort of a 70/30 chance of being able to do the career you want’.”

Photo Credit: @amycook_photography

Of course, Summer took the gamble.

Like many students, leaving university and stepping out into the big bad world doesn’t always start with a bang and, with a few failed auditions, Summer found herself on the panto trail working with Wicked Productions doing Jack and The Beanstalk at the Theatre Royal in Margate and taking a tour of the UK with The Jungle Book. While it was perhaps not the start she had dreamed of, it marked a change in mindset.

“It was a right laugh,” she says. “And I realised with that, I don’t care whether the job I’m doing is, like, seen as the ‘best job’, I care that it’s fun that I’m doing what I love to do, which is entertaining people and that the people around me value me for that. That is something that I think carried me forward to get into other jobs.”

At the beginning of 2020, Summer was contacted by friend and choreographer Joshua Pilmore to audition for a music video starring rising pop singer Rina Sawayama, and she nailed it.

“It was amazing,” says Summer. “I had so much fun and really clicked with her music and her whole way of writing and being and performing. There was a lot of talk of things coming off the back of that video. And then it couldn’t happen…”

Covid hit.

“This momentum that I was excited about was gone. Lockdown was a big thing for me, a massive thing. As it was for everyone. I had this long brown hair that I’d always had long because I’d always been told it was nice. And this sort of way of dressing and this thing that I thought was what I was supposed to do as a dancer and how I was supposed to look.

“It was a good few months in that I remember just sort of looking in the mirror and being like ‘I don’t recognise myself’. And so I then just decided ‘You know what? Stripping this all back, who am I as a person, not just a performer?’.”

A change of look, a change of attitude and even a little break from dancing and Summer admits it was a refreshing moment.

“It’s mad all of this stuff, these auditions and these things that I was, and these moulds that I was trying to fit, to really follow these paths that I thought were how to get the work. And actually it just happened when it was supposed to happen.”

Leaving lockdown, Summer was contacted by Josh once more and joined Rina as one of her dancers on a US tour in spring 2022.

“Having never left Europe, and having barely been abroad much, I was suddenly in LA. That tour lasted about two months. And then following on from that was a mad festival season. I was just fortunate that I fit in quite well with the team and that we all get on really well. And so when it came to the next album tour, I was asked to come back. And it’s not really stopped since then.”

Rina, who starred in and composed the single for the 2023 John Wick film, is pulling more than 3.2 million monthly listeners on Spotify with a rapidly growing global fanbase, selling out venues like the Hollywood Palladium and the Brixton Academy.

While the touring life of being in a different city every night and sleeping in bunkbeds on a bus with 12 other ‘housemates’ can be gruelling, Summer wouldn’t change it for the world. It’s her dream come true.

“The Brixton show was huge for me - playing a venue like that in London - because it’s that sort of home city and being able to have my mum and guestlist. It had been a good while that I’d been performing with Rina, and my mum hadn’t been able to be there for any of it. Especially because she’d supported me for, well, 20 years at that point, to do this, that was just great.”