Paramount+’s Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies may be gone too soon, but thankfully the dance numbers live on* via YouTube, and also in Emmy nominations for Outstanding Choreography for Scripted Programming. Two in fact! Jamal Sims and the duo of Jeffrey Mortensen and Louise Hradsky were all nominated for their standout routines.
For Sims, that included “New Cool”, “Hand Jive”, and “The Boom”, a personal favorite of mine. And for Mortensen and Hradsky, “Pulling Strings”, “Hit Me Again”, and “High Rollin” earned them the nod. For all three, this is their first Emmy nomination.
Check out the performances:
Greased Lightnin’ for a New Generation
Jamal Sims, who was lead choreographer on the project, is also a director and self proclaimed fan of the original Grease movies. As a veteran of film and TV, his resume is unsurprisingly full of hits including the Step Up franchise, Hairspray, Hannah Montana: The Movie, Footloose, Descendants 3, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Encanto, and more. In fact, he has two more Emmy nominations for 2023, in the Outstanding Choreography for Variety or Reality Programming category, for Beauty and the Beast: A 30th Celebration and Encanto at the Hollywood Bowl.
But back to the show at hand, in an interview with The Wrap, Sims explains how he went about merging the iconic dance style of the original films with more contemporary movement. And in another interview with Variety he specifically breaks down the choreography for “New Cool”, one of the aforementioned nominated numbers.
Jeffrey Mortensen and Louise Hradsky may be credited as associate choreographers for part of the season, but neither are newbies. They both have years of experience in the industry too and are credited on productions such as Once Upon a Time, Deadly Class, Descendants 3 (where they met Sims), the To All the Boys films, Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist, Julie and the Phantoms, Yellowjackets, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, etc. Hradsky also has quite a body of work in the stunts department as well.
In an interview with the CBC the two explain how they become attached to the project, what the choreography process is like on a TV show, and what the Emmy nomination means to them. The pair were also nominated for a Leo Award for Best Choreography in a Dramatic Series for the Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies episode “Cruisin’ for Bruisin’” (S01E07), and won!
So without further ado, here are those dance numbers.
“New Cool”
“Hand Jive”
“The Boom”
“Pulling Strings”
“Hit Me Again”
“High Rollin”
*While the series was unceremoniously removed from the Paramount+ platform, episodes are available for purchase on VOD services like Apple and Amazon. In addition, the complete first season was released on DVD this past fall.
