ALL THE RIGHT MOVES
Dancers learn new steps in the social media world
LOS ANGELES At age 12, dancer Taylor Hatala was touring with Janet Jackson. At 16, with 1.2 million Instagram followers, Hatala is one of the top dance influencers. She’s part of a new generation of performers who are redefining how the world sees dance.
Touring as a backup dancer for an artist such as Jackson or Justin Bieber used to be a commercial dancer’s dream. Now, that kind of work is a stepping stone to an even bigger prize: a robust social media account.
Dancers who break through on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, the popular app for short videos, can reap personal, artistic and financial rewards far beyond the payments for executing someone else’s moves and pounding the stage behind a pop star. Internet popularity can be a dancer’s entree to choreographing and starring in his or her own viral videos, travelling the world as a guest artist and teacher, as well as inking lucrative brand deals and endorsements.
“It used to be that your resumé was a sheet of paper that you would hand in at auditions,” says Hatala, who specializes in hip hop and is known as @tayd_dance on Instagram. “Now it’s our social media. My Instagram is my resumé, and my Twitter is my resumé ... People say, ‘We saw your Instagram, and this is why we wanted you.’”
Hatala’s home is Edmonton. She comes home from school a couple of times a month to hear her mom announce that they’re off to Los Angeles.
She was in L.A. recently to shoot a promo for the Netflix movie Tall Girl. Her life is “chaotic,” she says, and she loves it. But like most dancers, Hatala is a perfectionist.
“Sometimes I stress out about it because in our generation, if something doesn’t interest you in the first two seconds, you scroll past it. I have a constant battle with it, because everything I put out I want to be perfect. I want to be proud of it.
“But at the same time, personally, I appreciate dancers who are raw over their social media. And it’s important to me to still show my fans that I am human. I’m not fake. I make mistakes and I mess up as a dancer.”
There you have the key issues for these young performers: How to hook their fans. How to keep luring new ones. How to post top-notch, original work five or more days a week. How to balance awesomeness and relatability, the chief currency to a digital audience. That’s especially true at the younger end of the millennial spectrum, those 18- to 25-year-olds — so coveted by marketers, so difficult to reach — who want to see themselves in their heroes.
“Everyone in this industry is trying to figure out what goes viral,” Hatala says. “Most of the time the videos that I put the hardest work into only get so many views. And a lot of the videos that have gone viral have just been, literally, me dancing and having so much fun in the studio, not expecting anything out of it. Or just with my dad and his phone.
“You have to stay on top of it. You have to be looking at your insights, and just see what your followers like.”
Staying on top in the digital landscape is more art than science, even though science can help. Analytics show what demographic they’re reaching, where their fans are, what posts keep their attention.
“They’re the first generation of dancers that combine the pixie dust and the data,” says Larry Shapiro, chief executive of Ensemble Digital Studios, an artist management company. Among his clients is Kaycee Rice, a 17-year-old hiphop dancer with fierce energy and extraordinary flexibility. She has more than two million Instagram followers and two YouTube channels, where, she says, she gains 200 to 500 subscribers daily.
“The difference between Paula Abdul at her start and Kaycee Rice is that Kaycee analyzes the data behind her videos, like engagement and retention rate,” Shapiro says.
This means that Rice can get the brands that sponsor her — Nike, Under Armour and others — before more eyeballs.
That’s a lot of power in these dancers’ hands. Industry experts see them changing the music industry, too, as the public appetite for dance grows across social media. Once, record labels insisted that dancers take down videos they had created without getting permission to use the music. That impulse has evolved, says John Shahidi, who runs Shots Studios, an internet talent management company.
One of his clients is Delaney Glazer, 23, a dancer who toured with Bieber and now posts short dance videos for her 1.4 million followers on Instagram and makes longer, high-quality ones for her YouTube channel, often with a narrative arc and shot on locations around Los Angeles.
Influencers in general tend to have a bad reputation — all flash and no substance.
“The word ‘influencer’ confuses people,” says Glazer, who likes to think of herself as “using dance to bring life and happiness and energy, instead of just products.”
Indeed, social media’s dance stars defy the judgment of shallowness. To start with, their skills look superhuman. Their talent is obvious and easy to appreciate.
It’s about time, says the dance community, which has been historically undervalued everywhere, even in the glamour world of Hollywood and television.
“I don’t want to wait for an artist to hire me. I want to be my own artist,” says James Derrick, known as @bdash_2. A former competitor on NBC’s World of Dance, he creates his own music, and aspires to build his following as a musical artist-dancer.
“With these platforms, at the end of the day you don’t need a label, all you need is fans,” he says. “That’s why social media is golden for people like us, because you can become an artist without anyone holding us back and telling us what to do.”
... I appreciate dancers who are raw over their social media. And it’s important to me to still show my fans that I am human. I’m not fake. I make mistakes and I mess up as a dancer.