Dancing has its risks. We're not talking about shin splints and cuboid-bone displacements. We're talking about something really serious: public humiliation. Earlier this year, when R.-and-B. star Sisqo was on tour with the boy band 'N Sync, he would regularly attend after-parties in area clubs. Invariably, a local hotshot would slide up to him for a dance-floor face-off. "I would pretty much get challenged every night," says Sisqo, who is known for the impishly kinetic footwork in his videos. "Someone would go in the middle and start spinning on their head and jumping around and flipping around and then give me a look like, 'What you got?'"
That's the question music fans everywhere are asking these days: What you got? We're going to let you in on a little secret--and we're going to say this as nicely as possible--not all of today's hottest teen-pop stars are blessed with powerful vocal instruments. But that's not what many fans are looking for. In the '00s, they want to see their favorite performers get down, back that thing up, shake their bonbons, dance. "I want to be an all-around entertainer," says teen singer Christina Aguilera, who is actually blessed with a powerful vocal instrument but is nonetheless honing some salsa steps for her upcoming tour. When the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards are held this week in New York City, the most hotly contested category won't be Best Video of the Year (D'Angelo has the only clip worth rooting for). No, the contest to watch is Best Dance Video. That slot features Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, 'N Sync, Sisqo and Ricky Martin. Now that's a dance card.
In the alternative-rock-ruled early '90s, dancing was not a requirement. Who wants to sweat in flannel? Now, with teen pop topping the charts, good choreographers are in demand. Three in particular have emerged as major movers and hip shakers: Tina Landon (who has worked with Lopez and is teaching Aguilera those salsa steps), Darrin Henson (Spears, 'N Sync) and Fatima Robinson (Aaliyah, Backstreet Boys). Says Judy McGrath, president of MTV Group: "These days, when kids send us home videos, hoping to get on MTV, they're dancing in their bedroom, not playing air guitar."
The choreographers who have risen to the top tend to be self-taught. Landon, 34, a native of Lancaster, Calif., dropped out of junior college and worked as a Laker girl before getting her start in videos. The Bronx-born Henson, 28, says he "never actually trained anywhere...I used to watch music videos on TV and imitate what I saw." And Robinson, 29, from Little Rock, Ark., says, "The clubs are my classroom."
Most video choreography isn't pushing the frontiers of dance. Watch a day of MTV, and you won't see much that compares favorably with the abstract poetics of Merce Cunningham or the rich ethnic synthesis of Garth Fagan. Choreographer Susan Stroman, who won a Tony for her work on the musical Contact, says the dancing she has seen in teen-pop videos lacks the depth of stage work. "In theater, a dance piece has a beginning, middle and end, like someone telling a story with dialogue," says Stroman. "In music videos, it's about the energy and the sound of the instrumentation. The lyrics and the plot points are not as important." Still, she says, anything that exposes youngsters to dancing is, on balance, a good thing.