Mobile is going to look gorgeous when "The Prancing Elites Project" hits TV screens nationwide on Wednesday. The people of Mobile? Well ... stay tuned.
At 9 p.m. Central time on Wednesday, the Oxygen channel will air the premiere of a new reality show based on The Prancing Elites, a five-man dance team from the Mobile area. Even in the colorful world of reality TV, the premise stands out: This is a team of five gay black men practicing a style of dance known as J-Setting, which emphasizes distinctly feminine looks and moves, all set in the Deep South.
For the quintet, Wednesday night's airing represents an almost inconceivable transition from obscurity to celebrity.
"I really wouldn't even know how to explain it or describe it," team leader Kentrell Collins said of his feelings about the impending premiere. "Because I can watch the first cut and I can watch the previews and all of that, and I can start and stop it whenever I want. But to know that millions of people is going to be watching it at the same time, I'm not going to know how to feel, I'm not going to know how to react. I'm just going to be numb. Because it's just going to be overwhelming to me."
The Elites' journey to this point really got started in late 2013, when the troupe's appearance at a Christmas parade in Semmes shocked some onlookers, creating a local controversy that drew some national attention. The Elites were excluded from Mobile's official New Year's Eve celebrations, but were cheered at a series of downtown appearances that night.
The group got invitations to appear outside the area, was featured on "Tosh.0" and even went on to make a brief appearance on "America's Got Talent" in 2014. Oxygen had announced its intent to broadcast a reality show, and by year's end, production was under way.
There's no doubt this will be a particularly high-profile showcase for the Mobile area: While people from Lower Alabama have been featured in many major reality shows, and a few shows have been shot in the area (notably "Sweet Home Alabama"), this is the first in which an all-local cast is central and its interaction with its home region is at the very heart of the action. The fact of the matter is, the area is tolerant enough to present the Prancing Elites with opportunities to strut their stuff to cheering crowds, but traditional enough to present them with considerable opposition as well.
Where will the overall balance fall, over the run of a dozen half-hour episodes? Time will tell. But at advance look at a rough cut of Wednesday's premiere suggests that we will see some ups and downs.
One thing that stands out as the production values on interstitial footage of Mobile: Skyline shots, time-lapse sequences and scene-setting montages tend to be quite flattering. Mobile looks like someplace you'd want to visit. "I said, 'Wait, that's Mobile?'" said Collins.
"I don't think it's just the production," said fellow Elites member Jerel Maddox in a recent interview. "To my honest opinion, I think Mobile is actually a beautiful city." Locals shouldn't lose sight of that because of crime and general negativity, he said. "People perceive Mobile as this down and out city. But if you look at it from the bright side, I think Mobile is a beautiful city."
As for the action, much of the first episode is spent to establishing the premise, explaining what J-Setting is and who the Elites are, and introducing the five dancers. In addition to Collins and Maddox, the team includes Adrian Clemons, Kareem Davis and Tim Smith. The action ranges from a comical fish-out-of-water sequence as the team joins its agent in an upscale Dauphin Street restaurant, to an attempt to join a local parade.
In this case, the group sets its sights on a Saraland parade, but its application is turned down. The Elites show up anyway, which leads to some rejection and also a show of support. That up-and-down experience, along with a teaser montage showing glimpses of future episodes, suggests something interesting about the new series: That it won't be driven by shock value or controversy, but by its emotional content.
"I can agree," said Collins. "Which I think is what's going to actually draw more people to watch the show, because they're going to be able to see our true lives, and it's not going to be just us acting funny. Although we do dance, it's more to us that just dancing."
"I just hope people see the Prancing Elites as more that what they already think we are," seconded Maddox. "From the media and from the whole Semmes incident, people think we're just this dance team that likes to go to any and every parade and just, as they would say, corrupt the kids' minds or not think about family first, whatever the heck that means. After watching this season, I hope people get the understanding that we are humans too. And regardless of what we wear and how we decide to dance, we have talent and we have feelings and we have families just as well."
"We just want people to know it's okay to be yourself," Maddox said.
"Even if a straight person is watching the show, I personally feel like it's not going to make them uncomfortable, because when we deal with these real-life things, such as discrimination, or such as relationship problems, family problems, those are real problems that anybody can go through," said Collins. "And to have an outlet for us to actually express it is like, I think that's what's going to draw our family and friends closer to us, that have been knowing us our whole life, they probably just never got a chance to see that side of us."
Both Collins and Maddox said making the show had been a grueling process, but one that reflected the troupe's wishes.
"The process was hard as hell," said Maddox. "But after everything is done, we're just proud of how everything has turned out."
"I'm very excited for the world to see that hey, this is our real life, and whatever you see throughout this season is 100 percent real," he said. "Nothing is staged. None of the tears are faked, everything is coming from pure emotion."
"There's nothing like this on television, or at least I've never seen anything like this on television," said Collins. "We're so open with ourselves, and for us to allow these camera crews and this network to come into our personal space, that actually took a lot out of us, because we're so private when it comes to our personal lives."
"That's the most important part, that's the amazing part to us, because our story is being told the way that we want it to be told," he said.
"I think what stands out the most ... we learned things about each other that we didn't even know," Collins added. "It just showed us that we are actually stronger than we even knew."
Collins acknowledged that everything in the show won't be flattering. From his perspective, there's a lesson in that. "I think Mobile is actually going to see themselves ... well, I'll just say this: The things we go through in Mobile, we shouldn't have to deal with that, especially since this is our hometown," he said.
He also drew a firm line on how much of a generalization should be made about the Elites themselves.
"People are saying that this show (is), or we are, representing the black man in a bad way or (that) the network, they're feminizing the black man or whatever," Collins said. "We want people to know that we aren't trying to represent a race or a sexual orientation group. We're just representing ourselves. We're just putting ourselves out there. We're putting our lives out there, because this is how we live. And this is what we go through on a daily basis. We're not trying to represent the entire race, or the African American community. All five of us, we cannot speak for the entire population of African Americans, or LGBT. We can only speak for ourselves."
As the show unfolds, one core audience won't be sitting by passively waiting to see how it goes: The Prancing Elites themselves. They were to watch the premiere in New York, after starting the week with visits to Chicago and Los Angeles.
Asked what the next couple of months hold for the Elites, Maddox said, "Ooh, Lord, traveling. A lot. I've never been so used to paying my rent online. Our schedule already is building."
"I don't think we're going to be sitting around just watching the show," said Collins. "I think the only way to make this work is to keep moving."
"The Prancing Elites Project" airs at 9 p.m. Central time on the Oxygen channel on Wednesday, April 22. For local availability, check with your cable provider or visit www.oxygen.com. A variety of video clips can be seen at the site, which also indicates that full episodes will be available online after their broadcast.