Interview: Jordan Banjo, of street dance troupe Diversity, on their new show Limitless
The show was written by Diversity founder Ashley Banjo, Jordan's brother
If a week is a long time in politics, four years is an eternity in the world of reality television. Winning Britain’s Got Talent in 2009 is no guarantee that anybody will remember your name six months later, let alone buy a ticket to your show.
Yet, four years on, streetdance group Diversity is still a household name – and about to play Scotland’s largest entertainment venue. What’s the secret of their relative longevity?
‘Hard work has a lot to do with it,’ says Jordan Banjo, one of the group’s eight dancers. ‘But the other big thing is we love what we do; we stand true to that and people respect us for it. We’ve never been the kind of people who go out to clubs to try and get photographed by the paparazzi, or be the centre of attention. For us, it’s all about dancing and entertaining people.’
On the road with their third tour, Limitless, the Diversity guys are having more than a little fun pretending to be superheroes (‘long story short, we have to save the world’, says Banjo) following on from their previous show Digitized, where they were all stuck inside a computer game. Coming up with new and interesting ways to present what they do, and sustain it over a full-length show, isn’t easy. But according to Jordan, his big brother and Diversity founder, Ashley Banjo, is the mastermind behind the antics.
‘Ashley has a giant notepad full of what looks like American football tactics,’ he says. 'Nobody can figure it out apart from him. So when we’re in the studio training, Ashley will just whip out the notepad and say "right, we’re going to try this". Next thing you know, you’ve got somebody flipping over someone else, or getting thrown through the air – and it all comes from Ashley’s head. He’s just a little bit of a crazy genius.’
The Hydro, Glasgow, Tue 10 Dec.