Nick Lazzarini on World Domination and Never Sending an Assistant to Compton for a Weave

A dancer since the age of four, Nick Lazzarini is ready to take the world by storm.

Nick Lazzarini shot to fame as the first season winner on So You Think You Can Dance and has continued to make a name for himself in the world of entertainment. There's a reality series in the works with his longtime friend Travis Wall as well as Teddy Forance and Kyle Robinson. The project is called All The Right Moves and it's in development at Oxygen. There's also an upcoming Atlantis Cruise that Lazzarini is hosting with Wall. And finally, this Tuesday nigh Lazzarini's dance company Shaping Sounds has a show in Los Angeles.

On a rehearsal break from the Shaping Sounds show late last week, Lazzarini grabbed a cup of coffee to chat with AfterElton.com about everything currently happening in his busy, exciting life.

AfterElton.com: I know you and Travis have known each other for a long time but what is the actual meeting story?
Nick Lazzarini: I was 12 and he was 9 and, actually, it was me and another boy from my studio that was Travis’s age and then Travis and his brother Dan. The four of us all competed against each other. I won, Danny got second and Travis got third. It’s funny, but that’s the first time we met. That was also the only time we competed against each other. I’m three years older than him and once you hit a certain point you stop competing against the little ones. I think when I was 19 and he was 16 we kind of met again outside the competition world and met as friends. This is when I first moved to LA… and we just never were separated after that.

AE: Tell me first about the Shaping Sounds show happening in LA [this] week..
NL: A couple years ago, it was right after Travis worked on a Dancing With The Stars piece with NY City Ballet. [and] we were all sitting there and it was one of the first times we had all joined forces and we thought ‘We have to do this. We have to make this our lives because doing jobs through friends is what we have always aspired to be doing.’ The fact that we finally got to do it was amazing so we thought, ‘Why not do it all the time? Let’s make a dance company and let’s take over the dance world.’ Slowly but surely things have kinda fallen into place. We finally got our own show and it coincides with the work we’re doing with Oxygen so we’re killing two birds with one stone. It’s a night of dance. It’s a night of a lot of different genres of dance, a lot of ups, a lot of downs, a lot of emotions you hopefully will be feeling.

So You Think You Can Dance has helped make Lazzarini and Travis Wall household names.

AE: I went to see the So You Think You Can Dance tour when it stopped here in LA and, honestly, it didn’t really hit me emotionally, which was disappointing since I love the show. It sounds like Shaping Sound is definitely going to have a lot of emotion.
NL: This is going to be a lot more intimate because it’s at a club. It’s at the Highlands, which is at Hollywood and Highland, and it’s a more intimate feeling. We’ve turned the dance floor in the club into our dance space so everybody is going to be seated around us. It’s going to be an experience!

AE: I also hear you and Travis are going on an Atlantis cruise next month. Is it your first cruise?
NL: No, I actually went on a cruise through a dance convention, and it wasn’t my favorite. It was kind of a jenky cruise.

AE: What does that mean? Jenky?
NL: There were a lot of gold chains with girl’s names written on them and the Jersey Shore fist-pumping. It was one of those cruises. I stuck out like a sore thumb.

Lazzarini (l) predicts he and Wall will get into
trouble on the cruise. (With unidentified female)

AE: So definitely not an Atlantis cruise, huh?
NL: No! This one is going to be a bit more fun. I think we’re going to get into a lot of trouble on this cruise. I’ve heard a lot of crazy stories but I’m excited! I’m going to have to really sleep because I have a feeling we’re not going to be getting much sleep on the cruise. It’s going to be a lot of crazy parties and crazy things.