Even by the razzle-dazzle requirements of TV expertise competitions, “Dancing With Myself” units a formidable scene. Two stacked rows of room-size cubes, trimmed in shimmering lights, fill the stage — “Hollywood Squares” meets “Saturday Night Fever.” At the judging desk sit the pop stars Shakira and Nick Jonas and the web superstar Liza Koshy; behind them, a cheering studio viewers. One dice’s door slides open to disclose the present’s first contestant, who begins to carry out …
… a TikTok-style dance problem. The sort that creators on the app are identified for filming of their bedrooms, pajamas elective.
The engineered glamour of community actuality TV may appear at odds with the carefree looseness of TikTook dance. “Dancing With Myself” has got down to show in any other case. The new NBC present, Tuesdays by July 19, tries to translate the viral dance problem phenomenon right into a actuality competitors format.
The packaging is acquainted: an elaborate set, a dwell viewers, a set of superstar judges. But this system’s social media-fluent contestants — who carry out quick dance challenges in remoted “pods” — don’t look, or transfer, like most dance-show opponents. And the judges aren’t simply commenting from behind the desk: They’re additionally billed as creators, setting and educating the present’s dance routines.
“Dancing With Myself” is tapping into the of-the-moment energy of TikTook in addition to the now vaguely nostalgic energy of a community tv expertise present. In its efforts to marry these two cultures, it has confronted a few of the identical points which have roiled the social media dance world — and revealed how a lot TikTook dance itself has developed.
“It’s trying to legitimize TikTok dance in a venue that is the antithesis of TikTok,” mentioned Trevor Boffone, a trainer and creator of the e-book “Renegades: Digital Dance Cultures from Dubsmash to TikTok.” “But it’s also showing how deeply this kind of dance has become embedded in popular culture.”
“Dancing With Myself” went into improvement in early 2021, simply after the dance problem reached its zenith. “We saw people having these virtual dance parties and posting these dances from their living rooms, with everybody looking for a way to connect,” mentioned the chief producer John Irwin. “And we thought, ‘My gosh, there’s got to be a show in this.’”
Celebrity star energy clinched the concept. In December 2020, Shakira and the Black Eyed Peas launched the dance-forward music video for his or her tune “Girl Like Me.” It shortly went viral as followers tried to recreate a jazzercise-inflected passage of the choreography, which was created collaboratively by Maite Marcos, Shakira, Marc Tore and Sadeck Waff. Already a dance challenge veteran, Shakira started reposting her favourite “Girl Like Me” movies to her social accounts. “She felt like the perfect person to pull into this,” Irwin mentioned.
Shakira got here on board as each an government producer and the chief of the present’s judging panel. Later, the mannequin Camille Kostek joined because the host, and Koshy and Jonas rounded out the judging panel.
You’ll by no means hear the title TikTook on “Dancing With Myself.” (“We didn’t want to be ‘the TikTok show,’ because we thought this movement was larger than that,” Irwin mentioned.) But TikTook tradition, shined up for tv, shapes many points of its format.
The 12 contestants on every episode study a sequence of routines that resemble social media dance challenges of their brevity and relative simplicity. They carry out in sq. “pods” that counsel the boxed seclusion of cellphone screens, unable to see one another for a lot of the challenges. Like many TikTook dance creators, Jonas, Koshy, Kostek and Shakira usually are not skilled choreographers, however all reveal and assist train the present’s routines. Though judges have alternatives to save lots of favourite dancers, “likes” are the forex of the competitors, with winners decided by viewers votes which might be animated onscreen as showers of hearts.
The “Dancing With Myself” strategy to casting is probably most in step with TikTook’s ethos. “On the app, what leads to success is not necessarily good dancing, but, really, the personality of the performer,” Boffone mentioned.
Though some “Dancing With Myself” contestants are gifted and extremely skilled dancers, the present makes a degree of together with charismatic opponents of all talent ranges. Many are already TikTook standouts: the dancing flight attendant, the dancing police officer, the dancing dentist. (And the dancing TikTook scholar. Boffone, who posts routines with his students on Instagram and TikTok, was solid as an alternate for the present’s fifth episode.)
“This is a show that is for everyone,” Shakira mentioned in an electronic mail. “It’s about celebrating the love of dance and personal stories among all people, not just professionals.”
“Dancing With Myself” has arrived as TikTook dance reaches an inflection level. In 2019 and early 2020, when the platform was nonetheless primarily often known as the “teen dance app,” its tradition revolved across the dance problem. But as TikTook has grown to incorporate a wider vary of customers and makes use of, dance challenges have grow to be much less dominant. The Renegade challenge, which Jalaiah Harmon choreographed in fall 2019, has 124.8 million views. This spring’s blockbuster dance, choreographed by Jaeden Gomez to Lizzo’s tune “About Damn Time,” has about 31 million views.
Continuing questions in regards to the correct crediting of dance creators, notably creators of shade, have additionally contributed to the cooling of the dance problem development. Last summer season’s #BlackTikTokStrike marketing campaign noticed some Black artists, annoyed by white influencers co-opting their dance content material, take a step again from the platform. (The app just lately added a built-in crediting feature that enables customers to establish the unique creator of a dance.)
The present’s relationship to this dialog is considerably difficult. “Dancing With Myself” doesn’t embrace its contestants’ social media handles and even their final names, making it tough to search out or observe them on-line. It additionally replicates, after a vogue, a few of the crediting points many TikTook creators have protested. During the present, the celebrities are recognized as creators of the dance challenges, and reveal the choreography as if it have been their very own. Behind the scenes, they’re aided by a group {of professional} choreographers — Brittany Cherry, Cameron Lee, Will Simmons and Kelly Sweeney — who have been themselves chosen by the choreographers and co-executive producers Tabitha and Napoleon Dumo, who’re married.
“If you’re not a choreographer, it’s quite a to-do to create that many dances in a short amount of time,” mentioned Napoleon, who, with Tabitha, has labored on “So You Think You Can Dance” and “Dancing With the Stars,” amongst different reveals. “We’re there to assist the creators in the choreography. We put a base together, and then we work together with them on what feels good and what moves they want to put into the dance.”
Napoleon notes that the present’s finish titles embrace the entire choreographers’ names, which is already extra crediting than some tv dance artists get. “To put that information in the episode itself, I think it’d be confusing for the audience,” he mentioned. “We don’t always say when Tom Cruise is doing a stunt or when it’s a stuntman.”
The “Dancing With Myself” contestant roster consists of a number of profitable social media stars. Why would they topic themselves to the reality-television meat grinder? Because common creators’ massive follower counts can obscure the narrowness of their fame, which is commonly restricted to a distinct segment on-line group. A nationwide TV present provides a bigger highlight — a boon for these craving higher recognition for his or her work.
“I mean, it’s network,” mentioned Marie Moring, a second episode contestant who has nearly 700,000 TikTok followers. “Social media is fairly new, but NBC has been around. People know NBC.” And Moring, 46, discovered that the present helped her attain a brand new demographic: her friends. “A lot of Gen X-ers, my people, they’re not on social media, but they watch TV,” she mentioned. “People are coming to my page now just to say they saw me on the show.”
TikTook superstar can also be restricted by the platform’s short-video format, which permits solely transient glimpses of its creators. Keara Wilson, 21, the winner of the second episode of “Dancing With Myself,” is without doubt one of the most well-known TikTokers to seem on the present: She choreographed the Savage problem that swept the web in spring 2020, and now has 3.4 million followers. Despite her viral second, Wilson mentioned she thought few of her followers knew a lot about her.
“There’s just not much you can show doing 15- or 30-second videos,” she mentioned. Hers was a wierd half-fame — additional difficult by white creators’ appropriation of her choreography, which meant that many who encountered the Savage problem by no means knew Wilson created it. (Wilson is now within the means of copyrighting her Savage dance.)
But actuality TV is the realm of the again story, and “Dancing With Myself” consists of packages showcasing contestants’ offline in addition to on-line lives. On the present, not solely did the judges shout out Wilson because the creator of the Savage problem however viewers additionally realized about her coming wedding ceremony, and her intensive dance expertise past TikTook challenges. “It’s been two years,” Wilson mentioned throughout her episode, “and I finally get to show who I really am.”
Neither Moring nor Wilson noticed a major bump of their TikTook followings after showing on “Dancing With Myself.” Both, nevertheless, mentioned they cast precious bonds with most of the creators they met on the present. Boffone described the resort the place contestants stayed throughout filming as “TikTok summer camp,” with everybody staying up late to apply dances and share profession recommendation.
“A lot of us were very excited to be around other people that get it,” he mentioned. “It’s like, hey, how do I talk to brands? What are some good strategies for using hashtags? It’s become this cohort of people that are all sharing resources and helping each other be successful.”
Though “Dancing With Myself” is far from a runaway hit, it would mirror the subsequent step within the improvement of TikTok-style dance: taking the dance problem offline. As the app’s vocabulary and memes have seeped into mainstream tradition, TikTook dance-alongs have begun taking place in every single place from concerts to baseball video games. There could also be a day if you end up much less more likely to see TikTook dance on TikTook than you might be to see it on TV.
“These kinds of movements, it’s not the platforms that are creating them, it’s the people,” Irwin mentioned. “We’re offering another place for that movement to spread.”
