From crocheting and performing on the Taylor Swift Speak Now Tour to working on harnesses in the latest Beyonce tour, aerialist dancer and choreographer Shannon Beach has quite the resume.
She worked with Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines after graduating high school. Then she moved to Vegas where she booked the Broadway show Saturday Night Fever and relocated to New York City before joining its national tour. After 863 shows, she decided to audition for Cher’s Farewell Tour.
“Being able to be quick, being adaptable, being very good with schedule to make sure that you are in the lobby at the right time. Understanding how to really work within such a high level of professional experience has been such groundwork that I obviously traveled with for my entire career which is now 26 years long,” she said.
While on tour with Cher, Shannon learned how to do aerial work which has become such a defining part of her career. After Cher, she toured with Pink in Australia, Leona Lewis in UK and Ireland, and Taylor Swift for a year.
Shannon was assisting the aerial choreographer on the Taylor Swift tour when the opportunity to step in as a performer occurred. One of the dancers unfortunately suffered an injury and she believed she would only be performing for a couple of weeks when it became the whole tour. Rehearsals were a whirlwind for her.
For rehearsals, dancers start in a studio basically just getting the framework and starting to shape the vision for what it is. The next stage is production rehearsals where you then go to the arena or stadium depending on the artist. to have rehearsals with the actual set and the actual lighting and set. Usually, the most intense are the production rehearsals due to the limited amount of time and the many departments working on the concert setup.
During the Taylor tour, days off were just as fun as performance days with Shannon recalling memories with Taylor riding on yachts and visiting a beach house in South Carolina.In Australia Taylor had the five dancer girls and two female vocalists on her private plane with her between all the cities. After the shows they would get into a cavalcade with the police to the private plane for after show dinners. The next day they would land in Melbourne and the dancers would go to the beach, and go shopping.
“I like to think it might've been one of the most charming chapters in Taylor's life because it was right when she turned 21. We got to have bus dance parties. You can just tell she cares so much about her fans. I feel like the piece that we got from Taylor is just like that flower blossoming into the woman that she has become. And it was just a really sweet time,”she said.
Her favorite song to perform was “Haunted,” the aerial number where the dancers were in the bell. Some other insights about the Speak Now Tour Shannon tended to crochet and craft behind the scenes and she ended up bedazzling Taylor’s guitar she used for Long Live and the costume designer for the tour also designed for Broadway.
Since then, Shannon has worked with Justin Bieber on the believe tour setting up the angel wing harness and most recently on Beyonce’s Renaissance tour in Paris and Stockholm. She worked with the Les Twins training them on the sway pole, which is an apparatus they use in the show. It’s a 20 foot pole that you climb to the top of and sit like a bicycle seat. Every part of your movement affects how the pole moves.
In Shannon’s latest work, she directed and choreographed a show with another choreographer, for the AIDS healthcare foundation.
“I can’t wait to put this show on a stage again. Just so I can sit back to hear the audience. They were just so moved and these were just moments where you can tell art is so powerful. To be able to move 2,000 people to yell, scream, applaud, and get on their feet it’s just so cool,” she said.
Her choreography process has become very structured. First, she starts with a blank canvas. She begins breaking down the music into sections and the feelings She also keeps notebooks where she breaks down eight counts since plenty of the projects are at a larger scale.
All the years Shannon spent on tour, she found a way to keep busy by crocheting and cross stitching. On the Taylor Swift tour one of the other dancers, Marlene, was Madonna's personal trainer. She was asked by Madonna if she knew anyone that knew crocheting to teach her girls which is how Shannon began teaching Madonna’s twins how to knit.
‘I would go to Madonna’s house in Beverly Hills and have craft hour. As soon as they started I could tell that the twins have a natural gift for handiwork,” she said.
Her favorite dance style is the world between being a dancer and an aerialist. She enjoys the lift, rise, fall, and the connection to the ground to generate spin and fly in the air.
She hopes to inspire younger dancers to dream big because every step that you go on is towards an endless bigger goal. Logistically, she believes dancers should have a big bag of tricks like ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop, aerial, yoga.
According to Shannon, If you want to be a physical artist like a dancer the more that you can do, the longer your career will be. She notes having an interesting career is allowed by being able to do more.
“When I was a kid, if somebody had told me what my career was going to be my brain would have exploded. I just had endless dreams of what it could be. I cut pictures of dance magazine and had collages by my bed. I was consumed with the thoughts of dance and being a dancer. The biggest dreams that I had in my formative years 15-18 where I was formulating a hopeful future, everything that I’ve done is bigger than what I imagined for myself. I would've told myself to hold on,its going to be amazing, just hold on, be patient,” she said.