‘The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers’ is ready to battle with flips, spins and dance steps
But perhaps the closest cousin is the Fox series “Glee,” which invited the LXD to be the opening act in its recent concert tour. Both take classic media — show choir and dance — and recontextualize them for a contemporary audience. Both focus on misfits who eschew more popular high school pursuits such as football and drinking Coors Light while upside down. “There definitely are a lot of correlations,” says Harry Shum Jr., who plays Mike Chang in “Glee” and performs in and co-choreographs for the LXD. “It’s rooting for the underdogs.”
“The LXD would have a much tougher time without ‘Glee,’ ” adds Jeff Gomez, a transmedia producer who has helped build the universes for “Avatar” and “Pirates of the Caribbean,” among others. “Spiritually, symbolically and basically in reality, there is a direct connection between the two that opens a mass audience to the possibilities presented to the story worlds of the LXD.”
