Does Jackson Olson Have Dance Experience? His Savannah Bananas Background Explained
Jackson Olson will not be learning how to perform in front of a crowd for the first time on “Dancing with the Stars.” The Savannah Bananas second baseman has spent years dancing, spinning, celebrating and taking part in choreographed routines during baseball games. That has already led some DWTS fans to question whether he enters…
Jackson Olson will not be learning how to perform in front of a crowd for the first time on “Dancing with the Stars.” The Savannah Bananas second baseman has spent years dancing, spinning, celebrating and taking part in choreographed routines during baseball games. That has already led some DWTS fans to question whether he enters Season 35 with an advantage. The important distinction is that Olson has plenty of performance experience but no reported formal dance background. His time with the Bananas has taught him choreography and stage presence, but ballroom technique is a different challenge entirely.
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Jackson Olson has danced extensively with the Savannah Bananas
Dancing is genuinely part of Olson’s job with the Savannah Bananas, even if baseball remains the reason he is on the field. The Bananas describe themselves as an entertainment-first baseball organization, and their players regularly perform choreographed routines during games. Those can include pre-pitch dances, walk-up performances, scoring celebrations and routines built around popular songs and TikTok trends. Olson joined the Bananas in 2022 and became one of the team’s most recognizable personalities as his baseball career mixed increasingly with social media and live entertainment. That means DWTS audiences who have seen clips of him dancing with teammates are not imagining his previous exposure to choreography.
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What he does not appear to have is the type of formal training associated with contestants who studied ballet, jazz, contemporary dance or ballroom for years. Season 35 coverage of Olson’s background has consistently described him as having no formal dance training despite the amount of choreography he performs with the Bananas. That puts him in an unusual middle category. He is not a complete beginner when it comes to remembering movements or selling a performance, but he is also not arriving with professional dance technique already built into his body. The distinction will become more obvious once Emma Slater starts asking him to follow the technical rules of individual ballroom styles.
Why do fans think Jackson has an unfair advantage?
The argument started almost as soon as Olson’s casting became public because the Savannah Bananas are famous for turning baseball games into elaborate entertainment shows. Fans have seen Olson dance on the field, perform for cameras and participate in routines that require timing with other players. Olson even responded playfully to claims that he had an unfair advantage, sharing examples of the sort of dancing he has actually done with the team. His response did not deny that he performs regularly, but it highlighted how different those comic and celebratory routines are from formal ballroom dancing.
There are still skills from the Bananas that could help him. He already knows how to learn choreography without freezing in front of thousands of people, and years of playing baseball should give him athletic conditioning, coordination and body awareness. More importantly for a television competition, Olson understands that performance is about entertaining an audience rather than simply completing the required movements. DWTS has repeatedly shown, however, that athleticism and confidence do not automatically produce clean footwork, posture or partnering technique. Those are the areas where Olson will effectively be starting from scratch.
His baseball career became increasingly focused on entertainment
Olson did not join the Bananas because he was pursuing a dance career. His background is in competitive baseball, and his path included college baseball at the University of Hartford and Stetson University after he chose not to sign with the Arizona Diamondbacks organization. The shortened 2020 MLB Draft complicated his original professional ambitions, while his growing social media presence eventually created another route forward. When the Savannah Bananas entered the picture, Olson found a format where his baseball ability and personality could exist together rather than forcing him to choose one.
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That history helps explain why he looks so comfortable performing despite lacking formal dance instruction. Banana Ball deliberately asks players to become entertainers, and Olson has spent several seasons developing that side of himself. The team’s own description of its games makes clear that choreographed dancing is not an occasional gimmick but an established part of the product. Olson therefore arrives at DWTS with something valuable that cannot be taught quickly: comfort being watched. What Emma Slater now has to build is the technique underneath that confidence.
Can his Savannah Bananas experience actually help on DWTS?
Yes, but probably more with presentation than with ballroom fundamentals. Olson should be comfortable picking up sequences, performing to music and committing to routines that might make a less experienced contestant self-conscious. That could give Slater more freedom to focus on refining his movement rather than convincing him to perform for the cameras. His athletic background may also make physically demanding choreography easier to handle than it would be for some other contestants.
Season 35 nevertheless puts him beside celebrities with much stronger technical dance backgrounds, including performers who have trained or worked professionally. Olson’s experience is better understood as performance training acquired through baseball entertainment rather than dance training in the traditional sense. That makes the “unfair advantage” argument a little too simple. He knows how to put on a show, but DWTS will reveal whether a Savannah Bananas dance celebration translates when judges begin looking closely at his frame, foot placement, timing and partnership with Emma Slater.
