Harry Styles’ dancers for his “As It Was” Grammys performance most definitely don’t want to talk about the way that it was after the 65th annual award show. During Styles’ performance, you might’ve noticed that the dancers looked a little ~awkward~ and possibly confused. Is this what the performance was really supposed to look like? Well, to make it simple, the answer is no. What really happened is that the revolving disk that the dancers were performing on was spinning the opposite direction from how they’d been practicing it.
Looking back at the performance, you might be able to notice moments where the dancers’ movements didn’t seem super graceful. (Honestly, I find it impressive for them to have done the performance at all while freaking out on the inside — and all of this while on live television). However, this dance was truly impressive because despite the technical difficulties, these dancers were able to adjust their dance accordingly and make quick decisions to play it off cool. But what did the dancers have to say about it after the performance?
One of the dancers, Brandon Mathis, said in his Instagram story, “In real time, we had to troubleshoot and try to do a complete piece in reverse.” Not only were these dancers trying not to seriously freak out on stage, but they were also thinking twice as hard to do the choreography backward.
According to the BBC, another dancer, Dexter Da Rocha, voiced in a recently-deleted Tiktok how the technical difficulty caused issues with proper balance and coordination: “To switch all those patterns on the spot, having not even walked in that direction… like it sounds it’d be easy to walk, it’s like a treadmill, but I swear to god, since it’s circular, it pulls you in different directions and it’s such a special type of balance.” Da Rocha continued, “Unfortunately, news outlets didn’t know what was happening so they called it lethargic or boring or whatever, but it really was that we’re just trying to f*cking stay standing.”
Da Rocha reportedly said that another dancer was trying to “get the attention of the technician” but failed, due to them not wanting to cause a huge scene on live television with millions of people watching, which is understandable.
Despite the behind-the-scenes chaos of the dance, this situation was handled with professionalism, and it seemed to look like the dancers had it all under control in the end. Harry’s performance was amazing, as expected, and the dancers were still able to pull off an amazing performance while taking the saying “the show must go on” quite literally. Each one of these dancers deserve a round of applause.