GUILDERLAND — Jack T. Davis says he was shy as a kid growing up in Guilderland.

Now he feels a rush when he’s on a brightly lit stage and hundreds of women are cheering him on as he takes off his clothes.

He says he overcame his shyness by building his body, playing sports.

Now he uses his body to earn his living.

Davis has just finished a whirlwind tour of the United States with the male revue company Magic Mike Tour, as one of just six men who comes out on stage for a three-hour performance that includes group dances interspersed with 15-minute individual routines.

“Everyone has their own schtick,” he said, which the group’s manager helps them choreograph.

Over the two-and-a-half months he spent touring with Magic Mike in 2016, Davis said, the group performed in 37 states, in all four time zones, and coast to coast. They performed, he says, in sold-out theaters, convention centers, and arenas.

He was selected over hundreds of other men to join the tour, Davis said.

The men of Magic Mike became famous, Davis said, with the release of two films — ”Magic Mike” in 2012 and “Magic Mike XXXL” from 2015 — that were based on the group’s story and that starred Channing Tatum. Tatum has spoken frankly about having worked, before becoming an actor, as a male stripper.

Davis said Tatum is now involved with the group only as a producer; Tatum hopes to create a permanent home for Magic Mike in Las Vegas, in addition to the touring group, Davis said.

Davis, 32, is currently on a break from touring. “With this has come other avenues,” he said, explaining that he has recently signed with two more modeling agencies. The Magic Mike tour schedule is lighter in winter and gears up again in spring; he must decide by then if he will rejoin or not, he said. If his modeling career takes off, he may take that route instead.

All of the freelance work he does, he said matter-of factly, “is related to my body.”

Davis has done some solo stage performances in recent weeks. In addition to entertainment, he works as a model, including both catalog and fitness modeling. He describes “fitness modeling” as things like ads for protein shakes. He also takes part in bodybuilding and fitness competitions and is a personal trainer.

 

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On stage

In his work with Magic Mike, Davis said, the individual performance has four parts, Davis said. It starts with the initial routine — Davis says that his is not so much dancing as moving through a series of bodybuilder poses. 

This is followed by “taking off all our clothes — the ‘striptease,’ I guess you would call it,” Davis said, clarifying that the performers don’t actually take off all of their clothes.

 

 

At one point, while he is wearing just jeans and cowboy boots, he pours water over his head. “I kind of rub it over myself,” he said.

“We try to keep it classy, to a certain extent,” he said. “We could get in trouble if we were running around fully naked.” The men do strip down to scanty underwear. Some of the men wear thongs, Davis said, but he prefers a bodybuilding style called a half back that provides a bit more coverage.

“Can’t keep a lot of money in a thong,” he said.

Next is performing a lap-dance for the birthday girl, bride-to-be, or other woman from the audience who has agreed to come up on stage, which he says is “more intimate, one-on-one.”

The last is going into the audience to entertain women there.

As a bodybuilder, Davis said, his routines tend to involve lifting women up and pulling them close: “I have them tangled in my body, pretty much,” he said.

The audiences for these performances are all-female, a rule enforced by security at the door. Davis explained, “If guys were there with their girlfriends, say, there could be a ruckus.”

Davis said that the group does not perform at gay clubs — even though the second Magic Mike movie is said to have been very popular with gay male audiences. Aren’t they overlooking a huge potential market?

“I have nothing against it,” Davis said. “Not to be homophobic, but most of these groups don’t want to be tagged with something like that.”

His favorite part is being onstage, which he calls “a rush.” He likes it when “it’s just me up there in front of hundreds or thousands of people and all eyes are on me, just watching me perform, and seeing them smiling and knowing that they’re never going to forget this experience.”

Clean living

His least favorite part, as a fitness enthusiast, is the food that comes with life on the road, he said. The group travels in a “bigger van” and stays at hotels that often don’t have a kitchenette or place to prepare food. The men eat a lot of Mexican fast food, Davis said. For Davis, the “good, clean diet” that he prefers to eat involves avoiding any sauces, eating complex carbohydrates like brown rice, quinoa, or oatmeal, and choosing lean proteins such as chicken, turkey, and fish.

He does not have a girlfriend. He gets a wide range of reactions when he tells women what he does, from “‘That’s cool,’” he says, to “‘Oh my god, you’ve had thousands of women touching you,’ almost as if I’m tainted,” he said.

There are definitely “groupies” around, he said, but he steers clear, because he doesn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize his health and career by increasing his chances of getting transmittable diseases.

He does not take steroids, Davis said, and he doesn’t use drink or drugs to loosen up for performances. “I live a clean lifestyle. I want to go up there clear-minded,” he said. “I would be afraid that I would mess it up, and, like with any other job, if you mess it up too many times, they might just cut you.”

He was shy as a child, he said, but not any more. It helped that he started to get “into fitness hard” in ninth grade and then played Pop Warner football, as a running back and linebacker. Excelling in sports, he said, got him over his shyness.

He went to college for business administration at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania and then started working as a personal trainer. Eventually a contact he made through that work gave him a number to call about Magic Mike, and he first sent the company some photos, then was interviewed on Facetime before being offered a spot in the group.

He received six weeks of training before he started to tour.

His on-stage introduction always included the fact that he came from Albany, New York, Davis said. “I am proud of what I accomplished for myself and also for the Capital District,” he said. “I represented the area well.”

Davis’s father is a software salesman, as is his only sibling, a younger brother. His mother is a retired nurse. His parents recently moved to North Carolina. “I’m the only one in my family who’s left here,” he said, noting that the Capital District is conveniently close to the modeling agencies he works with, in Syracuse and New Jersey, and convenient to jobs in Boston; New York; and Washington, D.C.

“Everyone that’s close in my life has been very supportive,” Davis said. He says that he thinks his parents are proud of him. Neither has ever seen a show — his father, being a man, would not be allowed in, and he has never invited his mother, he said, looking squeamish at the thought.

The lap dances, he said, while sexual in nature, are really more of “a memorable experience,” he said, than anything else. “The moves are sexual, there is kind of a sexual thing [element], but I think it’s more something that they’ll probably go back and try with their boyfriend or husband, or just something for them to think about, I guess” he said.

He said that he thinks that, more than an overtly sexual experience, the show gives women an opportunity to “have a fantasy and see men that they normally wouldn’t see or interact with.” Reactions from women in the audience vary, he said, from “kind of giggly” to “very serious and into it.” Many women, he said, just find it “funny and entertaining.”

Davis has no plans to get married or have a family any time soon. “My main focus is just my career,” he said.

When he gets too old to be paid to take off his clothes, he said, he hopes to go into the business side of fitness or entertainment.

“Maybe I’ll run my own gym,” he says. “Or maybe one day I’ll have my own show.”