E14 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20 , 2019
deals. More important, Bdash is a
prime example of the layered cre-
ativity that’s possible for dancers
in the d igital r ealm. H e 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,” Bdash
says. “That’s why social media is
golden for people like us, because
you can become an artist without
anyone holding us back and tell-
ing us what to do.”
“Dancers get done wrong,” he
says, recalling the time he was
called to shoot a TV commercial
and ended up waiting around for
six hours, o nly to be told h e wasn’t
needed after all.
“That’s how they look at us. I
wanna change that, ’cause it’s not
cool. So you’ve got to have people
like me and the others say, ‘We’re
stars, too.’
“That’s why it’s good to build
your social media. It’s all your
work and your creativity. It’s a
new age.”
[email protected]Think You Can Dance.” He also
has toured with Usher, performed
in Chris Brown’s “ Party” v ideo and
traveled the world teaching mas-
ter classes. But strange as it may
seem, dancing in his kitchen is
how he supports his family.
Since his SYTYCD win, Kida
has amassed nearly 4 million fol-
lowers on Instagram. Experts say
that number can translate into
five and six figures per product
deal.
It’s about time, says the dance
community, which has been his-
torically undervalued every-
where, even in the glamour world
of Hollywood and television.
“I’ve seen the millions of dol-
lars that many of these dance
influencers can earn,” says Aris
Golemi, a ballet-dancer-turned-
agent and founder of Xcel Ta lent
Agency and Dance Influencers, a
global platform. “I represented
one dancer who made $ 9,000 just
posting a selfie with a watch.”
Golemi had a breakthrough
eight years ago when his client
Marquese Scott — soon to be one
of the biggest dancers on social
media — created an iconic solo
video, where his body seemed to
melt and reform with every meas-
ure, to the song “Pumped Up
Kicks.”
“We ended up traveling the
world, making all this m oney with
Google and YouTube,” Golemi
says. “I could have 10 dancers
working with Ta ylor Swift for a
week and we wouldn’t make that
kind of money. I never thought
that would be possible with just
dancing. But social media
changed everything.”
The independent, inspiring
spirit of these dancers is a big p art
of their appeal. What they offer
their audience is individual cre-
ativity, sometimes loud and raw,
or goofy and sweet, sexy and
strong, with a heavy beat.
“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 has a unique, exqui-
sitely smooth style that blends
krumping, popping and anima-
tion. At 30, he’s an outlier among
the younger set of influencers and
doesn’t have as many followers —
his hover around 300,000 on Ins-
tagram, more on TikTok. Still, he’s
making money on a few productobvious and easy to appreciate.
You don’t have to be a connois-
seur to admire, for instance, Ki-
datheGreat’s effortless popping
moves i n the videos he makes with
his buddies. He s hoots them in his
kitchen. His Instagram posts are
like little dance parties, where the
cool kids a re hanging out between
the stove and the sink. Their re-
laxed vibe is irresistible. (Fair
warning: The song lyrics aren’t
always G rated.)
“The kitchen, it’s perfect for
dance,” says Kida, 17, whose full
name is Leon Burns. “A nd my gut
told me just do it. Just stay in the
kitchen.”
He whips up the choreography
in about 15 minutes.
“I ask my friends, ‘What song
are you guys feeling right now?’ ”
he says. “I come up with the song
literally minutes before t hey get to
my house, and then we make the
magic.”
In 2 016, Kida was the Season 13
winner of the Fox show “So Youat y our insights, a nd just see what
your followers like.”
Staying on top in the digital
landscape is more art than sci-
ence, even though science can
help. Analytics show what demo-
graphic 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 En-
semble Digital Studios, an artist
management company. Among
his clients is Kaycee Rice, a 17-
year-old hip-hop dancer with
fierce energy and extraordinary
flexibility. She has more than
2 million Instagram followers a nd
two YouTube channels, where, s he
says, she gains 200 to 500 sub-
scribers a day.
“The difference between Paula
Abdul a t her s tart and Kaycee Rice
is that Kaycee analyzes the data
behind her videos, like engage-
ment and retention rate,” Shapiro
says.
This means that Rice can get
the brands that sponsor her —
Nike, Under Armour and others —
before more eyeballs.
“You have an entire generation
around the world who identifies
with her,” Shapiro says. “Kaycee is
reaching 13- to 18-year-old kids
and shaping what kind of enter-
tainment they like. So when she
grows up and produces bigger
projects, she’ll have fans whose
values she’s shaped.”
That’s a lot of power in these
dancers’ hands. Industry experts
see them changing the music in-
dustry, too, as the public appetite
for dance grows across social me-
dia. Once upon a time, 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 (who
know her as @deeglazer) and
makes longer, high-quality ones
for her YouTube channel, often
with a narrative arc and shot on
locations around Los Angeles.
“Every week we get one or two
songs from a label saying, ‘What
can Delaney do with this?’ ” Sha-
hidi says. “They’re looking at so-
cial media creators as a platform.
Instead of asking us to take it
down, they’re embracing us.”
Influencers in general tend to
have a bad reputation — all flash
and no substance. “The word ‘in-
fluencer’ confuses people,” says
Glazer, who likes to think of her-
self as “using dance to bring life
and happiness and energy, in-
stead of just products.”
Indeed, social media’s dance
stars defy the judgment of shal-
lowness. To start with, their skills
look superhuman. Their talent isthis sunny mecca of production
studios a nd agents, Hatala’s home
is Edmonton, Alberta, in western
Canada, with her parents and
younger sister, Reese, a dancer
who also has a growing social
media following. Of course, an
Instagrammer needs little more
than the camera on her phone and
some clear floor space to record
her videos, so location doesn’t
matter much. Still, Hatala comes
home from school a couple of
times a month to hear her mom
announce that they’re off to Los
Angeles, right away, for a job.
She was here recently to shoot a
promo for the Netflix movie “Tall
Girl.” Hatala and her mother, Tere-
sa, stopped in at a North Holly-
wood dance studio early one
morning for an interview and a
hip-hop-animation demo before
heading to the airport. Ta ll and
willowy, Hatala is a powerful
dancer with a refined quality, ev-
ery move beautifully c lear, wheth-
er it’s a sharp pop or the flutter of
an arm like a breath of wind.
When she speaks, she’s disarm-
ingly open. There isn’t much
about her world that she hasn’t
analyzed.
Her life is “chaotic,” she says,
and she loves it. But like most
dancers, Hatala is a perfectionist.
This puts her in a bind with the
ethos of her era.
“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,” she says. “I have a con-
stant battle with i t, because every-
thing I put out I want to be per-
fect. I want to be proud of it.
“But at the same time, person-
ally, 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 to jug-
gle: 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 relat-
ability, 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 mar-
keters, 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 with a sigh.
“Most of the time the videos that I
put the hardest work into o nly 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,”
she adds. “You have to be looking
INSTAGRAM FROM E1
dance
With social media,
a shift in how
we see dancers
JESSICA PONS FOR THE WASHINGTON POSTRIED MARTIN“It used to be that
your résumé was a
sheet of paper that
you would hand in
at auditions,” says
dancer Taylor
Hatala, above.
“Now it’s our social
media.” Delaney
Glazer, 23, below,
toured with Justin
Bieber and has
1.4 million
followers on
Instagram. “The
word ‘influencer’
confuses people,”
Glazer says. She
makes longer, high-
quality videos for
her YouTube
channel, often with
a narrative arc and
shot on locations
around Los
Angeles, and short
videos for her
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