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Critic'south Notebook
What Do Dancers Bring to a Halftime Show? They Complete the Moving picture.
Some dancers recoiled at the prospect of volunteering their services at this twelvemonth'south Super Basin halftime show: "You tin't make a living off of exposure."
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[Read how the Los Angeles Rams won the Super Bowl .]
A Super Bowl halftime bear witness can be gaudy in the most ordinary style, bringing to heed a line from an essay past the choreographer Merce Cunningham: "The music doesn't have to work itself to death to underline the dance, or the trip the light fantastic create havoc in trying to be as flashy as the music."
At a halftime show the choreography can certainly aspire to be as flashy as the music. But the dancers are something else: Far from creating havoc, they frame the activity. And in a infinite as vast as a football stadium, that'due south paramount. They bring construction to the stage; like a corps de ballet, they complete the flick.
On Feb. xiii, Super Bowl LVI's halftime show — a grouping affair with Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Dr. Dre, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar — volition feature professional dancers, 115 in all. And, as usual, those dancers will contribute more than they are given credit for every bit they push button their bodies to express the emotion and the force of the music.
Merely theirs aren't the but bodies involved. Along with the professional dancers — the ones who get paid — in that location are volunteers, or field participants, who accept been incorporated into the shows for years in diverse ways, often cheering on the musical artists and moving to the beat equally enthusiastic audition members. This year, there will be around 400.
But when some professional person dancers reported on social media last week that they had been approached to be volunteers, at that place was immediate, indelible outrage among dancers and their advocates.
Taja Riley, a dancer and activist in Los Angeles who has been a vocal supporter of dancers throughout the drama that has sprung up effectually the halftime show, wrote a post saying that many dancer friends had been contacted, "asking if whatsoever dance artists (with emphasis on pre-Dominantly African American Movers), would be interested to 'volunteer for free' equally talent for the Super Basin Halftime bear witness.
"I'm sure I don't have to explicate but the Super Basin is the almost Profitable GLOBAL SPORTING Consequence ON Whatever GIVEN Year."
Brandy Lamkin, of Dancers Alliance, an advocacy group, said in an interview that this isn't the outset time professional dancers have been asked to be field performers merely then end up dancing. "Normally," she said, "that's not the instance, and they do have field performers that don't actually dance or exercise minimal movement and those are volunteers."
And information technology's a fine line in terms of the movement they may be asked to execute. "In sure situations, you have information technology where, yes, it's minimal movement," she said. "Pregnant the volunteers, for the almost part, were merely standing there, but they may have wanted them to, 'On this role, everybody elevator your hands up and sway side to side at the aforementioned fourth dimension.' Nothing major."
But in other cases, she said, they are learning choreography and performing full sets of eight counts of movement.
On Tuesday evening, SAG-AFTRA, the union that represents artists working in motion-picture show, television and radio, issued a statement proverb that they and "the producers of the Super Bowl halftime testify have met and had an open and frank word, and have agreed that no professional dancers will exist asked to work for gratuitous as part of the halftime show. SAG-AFTRA will be advising our professional dancer members that they should non be rehearsing or working on the Super Basin halftime bear witness without compensation."
And so, problem solved? Not completely. The halftime show conflict isn't simply nigh the Super Bowl merely about the ways in which dancers in whatsoever field of study are undervalued — especially commercial dancers who work with major artists. "Every gig is different," Riley said in an interview. "At that place are people that do jobs for $75 a twenty-four hour period. Or $l a day, and they go away with information technology because it's a nonunion gig. And then for marriage gigs, if they're low budget, sometimes they can piece of work on microbudget scale," a designation reserved for performances that meet sure strict financing requirements.
"That'due south where they can work downward rates for trip the light fantastic toe artists," she added.
And the fashion rates are calculated ways that "dancers are continually underpaid in overtime," Lamkin said, adding that it was function of a broader issue: dancers working under old contracts with bad terms.
They are besides substantially anonymous. Who outside of the industry can identify a dancer in a video? And who, for that matter, can name a choreographer? This year at the Super Bowl, Fatima Robinson is doing the honors.
To perform without adequate compensation devalues dancers as artists. It suggests that dance is simply a hobby, not an artistic or athletic pursuit. Riley, who has been in the profession for 15 years and danced in 2 Super Bowls, the ones featuring Beyoncé and Jennifer Lopez, sees another problem.
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"There's no differentiation of my pay calibration and the trip the light fantastic toe creative person newbie that simply walked onto the scene, just moved to L.A. a couple months ago, and this is her first job," she said.
For dancers, this is debilitating. "There'south cipher to work up to," she said. "We are stuck in the mailroom."
At the halftime show, the difference between dancers and volunteers comes downwards to choreography. Equally part of a statement issued by Roc Nation, the executive producer of the halftime show, Jana Fleishman, executive vice president of strategy and communications, said: "The professional person dancers are completely separate from the volunteer-based, non-choreographed field cast. As in years past, information technology is completely up to the volunteer candidates to participate. Volunteers are not asked to learn choreography."
It'due south disruptive. The rehearsal schedule for the volunteers, including on game solar day, adds up to 72 hours. That'due south a lot, especially if they're not learning choreography. But where does minimal or everyday movement end and choreography begin? If Judson Dance Theater, the experimental 1960s collective, taught us anything, it's that pedestrian movement very much counts every bit choreography.
In an Instagram post, the Los Angeles dancer and extra Melany Centeno wrote, "yes Dance is work — no matter how unproblematic (endeavor to get twoscore pedestrians to stride on their correct pes at the same fourth dimension in time to music. Skillful LUCK)."
And if volunteers aren't asked to acquire choreography, what were they doing last year when they filed onto the field to dance to the Weeknd's "Blinding Lights"?
The stadium was alive with a sea of dancing bodies performing solos that expressed the angst of a pandemic year. Watching them, spread autonomously and socially distanced, nosotros were transported dorsum to the days when the only dancing that could take place safely was the kind you lot did at dwelling. Just it wasn't merely that: Even getting them onto the field was a striking human action of choreographic timing and precision. It was more than a corps de ballet completing the moving picture; they were the motion picture. For me, it was a thriller, a functioning that was transcendent even on television.
Clearly, the volunteers were every bit integral equally the professional dancers. Keenan Williams, a dancer and a member of 321 Hype with the Orlando Magic, performed every bit a volunteer in that Super Bowl, held in Tampa, Fla. He said his thinking was that information technology would exist a way for him, a freestyle dancer, to expand his range by working with a choreographer.
In accelerate of the rehearsals, Williams said he received an email explaining that if he could learn a TikTok trip the light fantastic, he qualified. When rehearsals started, he found the state of affairs to be different. "In that location were uncomplicated movements, just it'southward definitely not TikTok movements," he said. "It'south an actual production. It's more organized. Information technology's more structured than in TikTok dancing."
Information technology was serious and painstaking. "If somebody moved their foot the wrong way," he said, "it was, 'run information technology back, run information technology back. Nope. Run it back from the superlative.'"
He said rehearsals took place over 10 days and were long — around viii to 10 hours a session. Lunch and water were provided, Williams said; he too got to keep his costume, the cerise jacket, the helmet and gloves. ("Because of Covid and everything," he said, "they were like, don't give u.s.a. back the clothes.") While he knew what he was getting into, he said: "At to the lowest degree we could take gotten a stipend or something, you know? Yous can't brand a living off of exposure."
But fifty-fifty exposure and cocky-promotion are challenging when it comes to the Super Bowl; the confidentiality policy is strict. "Honestly, I didn't even tell my mom I was doing the Super Bowl until x minutes earlier I got on the field," Williams said. "We couldn't have videos of rehearsals and they didn't want us posting on social media. They were watching everybody during rehearsal, even on our interruption time."
Dancers may exist seen as being replaceable and disposable, but what they bring to a product is invaluable. Nosotros've seen halftime shows that prove what musical acts expect similar without dancers. Lonely. Desperate. I am nonetheless scarred by Adam Levine's performance with Maroon 5 at Super Bowl LIII. He had a drum line and a choir likewise equally an adoring, cheering crowd — probably all volunteers — but he saved the dance, an unfortunate striptease, for himself. Its awfulness was remarkable. He doesn't move like Jagger. Simply dancers can — and more.
Information technology's strange that at an event that promotes physical prowess by the players on the field — and where, similar trip the light fantastic toe, precision is prized — dancers are then devalued. Both players and dancers will need water ice baths later the game. "My mental attitude toward this is, as trip the light fantastic artists," Riley said, "nosotros're not just independent contractors, nosotros're not but artistic performers, only nosotros're athletes. We're athletic, artistic performers. And and then at an athletic sporting event, no athlete should be doing that for free."
Volition the recent outcry change annihilation for dancers? SAG-AFTRA took a stand up. The earth is paying attending. And Lamkin said she hoped it would assist dancers meet that "the more we take those underpaying jobs with bad atmospheric condition, we can't ever move forrard."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/28/arts/dance/super-bowl-halftime-show-volunteer-dancers-pay.html
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