Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
BOUNTIFUL — Could you be an NBA dancer?
OK, sure, if you’re like most people, you aren’t outrageously fit, don’t have decades of dance experience and you don’t have time to take on a part-time job that approaches full-time when you add in the off-hours work required.
You may also not fit the hard-and-fast rules: at least 18 years old, a high school graduate, female and an “athletic physique."
But despite all that, let me try a little experiment with you. If you can’t do this because you’re reading this at your desk, or you're in the train, or whatever just imagine following along.
From standing, spread your legs out, then touch your hands to the ground. That’s Beat 1. Stand back up, straight as an arrow, except with your hands bent at the elbows at shoulder level for Beat 2. Now for Beat 3: push your hands down your body. For beat 4, raise your right arm to horizontal, moving it until it wraps around your head for Beat 5. Step your right leg out while doing the above. Repeat with your left arm for beats 6 and 7. Now step forward with your right foot for Beat 8.
None of that is tremendously difficult; each step is such that most adults can do it. But remembering each part of the dance, in order, and actually doing it, is pretty difficult. It took me a couple of minutes and 10 or so repetitions to remember each step after each other and get the flow of doing it sequentially.
But now, put on Rihanna. Fit all of those steps into exactly 3.75 seconds. Learn about 20 more eight-beat segments, all with wildly different steps and movements integrated within. Combine all of those, so that the 100 or so disparate movements all flow together with style. And then, during an NBA season, learn about 40 to 50 of those dances in about 45 minutes, usually two per practice, usually two days a week.
Despite the “empty-headed dancer” stereotype, the most impressive skill of an NBA dancer might just be memory recall.
This week is the Seventh Annual America First Jazz Dancer Boot Camp, a six-day, 18-hour introduction to what’s required of prospective Jazz dancers. The idea is to prepare students for what will be required July 11, the day the official auditions begin.
Auditions are rough. Generally, somewhere between 100-200 dancers show up overall. On Day One, they’re separated into groups of four, very quickly taught an NBA-timeout-length dance, then have to perform it in groups of four.
From those groups, director Jan Whittaker cuts them to a list of about 50 semifinalists. Those semifinalists then work at EnergySolutions Arena for two straight days with Whittaker, learn two more longer dances and undergo “hard, super intense, and awful” workouts.
Then, from those semifinalists, they’ll choose 30 finalists, who will interview with the staff and perform everything they’ve learned over the auditions. Finally, about 20 official America First Jazz Dancers will be selected.
At that rate, some Ivy League colleges accept a higher percentage of applicants.
But it’s not just the selectivity; pressure is high for other reasons too.
Mickenzie Willis, a prospective dancer who made the top 30 of last year’s auditions but ultimately was among the last cut, said “Once you get to a certain age, it’s hard to find somewhere to dance, so your options are either NBA teams or teach, pretty much.”
This process represents one of these dancers’ only chances to be a professional in a field they’ve practiced in for nearly two decades.
With such a high bar, the boot camp has a lot to accomplish. Each of the six days has a new focus: one day, they’ll bring in a hair stylist to give individual advice on the optimal style for tryouts. The next, the dancers’ official trainer Neil Anderson will give advice on intensive stretches that each dancer can do to reach peak flexibility. The next, they debrief the dancers on all of the various public requirements of being a Jazz dancer.
The culmination of the boot camp is the individual advice given on the final day, where each dancer learns exactly what it is they need to do in the short two weeks between boot camp in tryouts.
As Whitaker explains, “Maybe they need to work on their dancing. Maybe they need to become a little bit more fit. Maybe they need to be a little bit more expressive.”
The payoff for the dancers selected, though, is pretty sweet. It’s a real part-time job, with dancers making 2-4 public appearances per week at various community events and schools. The NBA brings selected dancers to the All-Star game, summer league and other events. And during the offseason, the NBA will take some dancers on international trips to countries around the world to grow the game overseas. Dancers do get paid reasonably for their work, though most of the dancers either have other part-time jobs or attend school with their remaining time.
But for most, the best part is the dancing itself. Whitney Wright, a prospective dancer, summed up the appeal that I heard over and over again: ”I’ve been dancing my whole life. This is just my kind of thing.”
