Britney's Dancing Crisis - A Way Forward

I still can't get over this damn furore about Britney’s dancing and everything that people are reading into it. I just want to say this: isn't it a little bit crazy to theorize that she’s running some kind of outlandishly extended protest against the Conservatorship? If everything is being done under protest, against her will... if she’s fighting the Conservators and really wants to quit showbiz, why wouldn’t she simply blurt out the horrible truth to interviewers, stick a middle finger up to the Conservators, sabotage her career, and get the whole thing over with? Or she could easily tell the paparazzi "I'm a prisoner! Get me out of here!"

However, for the sake of argument, let us accept that Britney’s dancing on the “Circus” tour and in recent videos and promo has indeed been sluggish compared to the good old days. PB and I have both pointed out that even in slow motion, Britney dances more than most artists, but the comeback to that is obviously “We’d accept it as just about OK if she was singing live at the same time - but she isn’t.”

In this article I want to suggest that it may be easier to solve Britney’s alleged performance problems in both the dancing AND singing departments than a lot of people think! We’ll come to that in a little while. But first, let’s make sure we’ve taken a look at every aspect of the alleged problems. It seems to me that there are some that haven’t received much attention.

The first thing to which I’d like to direct your attention is Britney’s comment that nowadays she's thinking of the bigger picture in planning her shows, rather than worrying about “Is this hard enough?” Unsurprisingly, the cynics were climbing all over this in seconds, shouting “Excuses! Excuses! More excuses!!!” But let’s calm ourselves down for a few seconds and take a closer look.

A UK-based neutral music website recently described the “Circus” show as “frantic”. This was a comment on the non-stop nature of the show, not on Britney’s role in it. I’ve been asking around, and everyone seems to agree that the show was endless action, apart from a few minutes when Britney sang “Everytime”. This is the bigger picture. You could, perhaps, compare it to one of Kylie Minogue’s shows, where extravagant sets and ambitious choreography whirl impressively around the totally non-dancing star.

But this approach is unusual. Most shows contain a number of “resting” sequences, whether obvious or well-concealed. For example, Pink’s energetic show that I saw a couple of years ago had a lengthy acoustic segment where she sat and sang with her backing singers. Shakira’s show allowed her to spend time in front of each section of the audience and also included slow, balletic and “writhing” dance moves.

Rihanna, Pink, Shakira and just about everybody else that I’ve seen live in concert has spent much of the show “strutting and posing”, as dancers put it. Each one of them made sure they had a really long catwalk so there was endless scope to do it. Shakira and Rihanna did a lot of the booty-shaking that made Beyonce famous, but so do the girls on TV sex-chat shows such as “Babestation”, and they don’t call it dancing.

Typical pop stage shows usually do include proper, choreographed dance sequences, but they are only SECTIONS of the show. They only crop up as special highlights and are separated from the live singing parts of the show. The problem comes when a show is totally choreographed - even if the actual choreography is simple, there’s still an awful lot for one central person to remember. Don't forget, he or she has to maintain 100% concentration throughout, and - as well as remembering dance moves - always has to be in exactly the right position in relation to stage layout and furniture, props, and other dancers.

I get the impression that a lot of fans think that (a) doing a choreographed show is easy, and (b) it mostly consists of dancing. Wrong!!!! I bet a lot of them would have watched Brian Friedman’s work on the last series of “The X Factor” and thought to themslves “Where was the choreography he talked about??!!” Yet it took days for the contestants to learn and rehearse a couple of simple sequences of movements that, in many cases, didn’t look like dancing at all. But that was the most they could manage while singing live.

Back in the dear dead days of ITZ, one well-known Britney site posted the full written-down choreography for one song, “Toxic”. It ran to the length of about 5 pages of A4 paper. Imagine trying to remember two hours of minutely detailed choreography. And reflect on this - even Britney’s much-derided X Factor appearance was fully choreographed, down to every arm movement and turn of the head. That was probably 5 pages of instructions too.

Britney is facing the consequence of trying to satisfy the fans’ apparent hunger for all-action shows and dance videos. The whiners and whingers seem to have forgotten that most of Britney’s best videos have been STORY videos like Toxic, Everytime and Womanizer and that’s what they should be crying out for. They also seem to have forgotten that Britney’s early shows weren’t entirely made up of non-stop hard-dancing choreographed action. Go back and take another look if you don’t believe me!

I’m conscious of voices offstage muttering “Excuses!” once more, so to keep them happy I’ll pick a fault with Britney. For WHATEVER reason, and I refuse to speculate, I think she finds it almost impossible to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, and indeed, often finds it hard enough even to concentrate on one thing. So, the more elaborately her shows and videos are choreographed, the more her brain will be fully occupied in trying to remember what the hell she’s supposed to do next. Hence the over-cautious look to her dancing. Hence too her not being able to sing live because she can’t concentrate on remembering pages of choreography and pages of song words at the same time.

There’s another problem with choreography, and that problem is INSURANCE. As a star, you have to have it. The dangers involved in uninsured losses can run into tens of millions of dollars, and are too great. But choreography has the effect of pre-designating risk, and trying to obtain insurance is an attempt at mitigating it. Proposing two hours of fast and furious choreography is on a par with making a statement of a pre-existing medical condition: it becomes a prisoner of insurance. And, to make matters worse, Britney HAS a pre-existing medical condition that has already been the subject of a disputed insurance claim in 2004.

If you don’t recall the incident, Britney’s insurers refused to pay out following her knee injury on the set of the video for “Outrageous”. They argued that she had had knee problems since the “Sometimes” video, and pointed out that she had already had a knee problem that caused the cancellation of some shows earlier in the Onyx Hotel tour. It was, her insurers argued, therefore a pre-existing medical condition and not covered by accident insurance. Britney’s lawyers argued that doctors had given her the all-clear after the Onyx Tour injury.

However, an accidental injury that could not be readily foreseen, obtained in the course of spontaneous, normal, typical human movement, would normally be covered. If a singer on a stage was to bob and jig and run around informally, move to the music as and when circumstances allow or dictate, improvise and freestyle it a little... that would be normal, typical human movement for someone who was generally fit and healthy.

So this is my suggestion: If Britney were to give up the 100% choreographed “spectacular” shows - or do like Kylie and let the dancers do that stuff and stay out of it herself - wouldn’t her natural athleticism and rhythm take over? I think she could freestyle, improvise and move informally with the rhythm, and the result would be natural Britney dance - more convincing, carefree and enthusiastic than anything she currently seems to be able to do when all the dancing is choreographed. We know she can dance well in practise and in the dance studio. We also know that in her early shows and tours, the whole thing wasn’t choreographed and she had freedom to improvise.

And could it be that, freed from the burden of trying to remember something like 100 pages of detailed choreography and stage instructions, Britney could manage to remember some song words and sing live too? I have no doubts at all about her actual ability to SING, and we’ve been told that she recorded a recent hit in 15 minutes, so.... I, for one, think she could do it. And wouldn't this be a way forward that would please most of her fans?