|
Originally written January 23, 2005. Simon Cowell recently excused all those who were caught miming in 2004. "If it sounds better with the vocal you recorded", he said, "why shouldn't people listen to that?"
It's a pity he wasn't around to excuse Britney Spears when she began the European leg of her Onyx Hotel tour at Wembley in April 2004. The UK tabloids were new to the concept of lip-synching, and were incandescent with outrage. The Daily Star's Joe Mott called for the public to boo her off the stage, or - preferably - boycott the rest of the tour.
We, the fans, weren't surprised by the media assault. What we didn't expect was a full-on attack on another front. But on that grim morning after Britney's first Wembley show, the Daily Star’s front-page headline screamed “Won’t sing - Can’t dance!” and soon all the UK tabloids were saying the same thing. Britney's dancers had to carry her, they said, because she herself was hopeless.
Everything was going badly wrong. Her dancing wasn’t getting her any rave reviews, yet expending all her energy on that was preventing her from singing live - thus earning her a double dose of dog’s abuse from plenty of fans as well as critics. For the first time in her mega-successful career, Britney Spears found herself wondering if her whole act was misconceived.
So what was the problem? Couldn't she just collect her credits by doing what everyone else does? There are plenty of models to choose from.
First there's the stars who don’t dance at all. Mariah, Whitney, Celine, Shania, KD Lang, Jessica Simpson and countless others don’t even bother trying to pretend - they just stand at the mic and sing. Then there are those who don’t really dance, but manage to create the illusion that they do. They use what Britney rather dismissively calls “struts and poses”.
Kylie hardly even struts nowadays, but poses plenty while her dancers whirl impressively around her. Christina struts and poses some of the time and some of the time she doesn't. Pink struts, writhes and poses. Gwen Stefani does a kind of equestrian dressage thing with her legs while leaning backwards and forwards. Avril bounces and kicks a little and sometimes plays 3-chord rhythm guitar. Rock and roll!
Britney is one of a very few who do detailed choreography throughout their shows, but the others don't mime as much. They get out of jail because they manage to blur the boundaries a lot better than Britney. They have a kind of “in-between” mode where they sing a little, dance a little, then sing a little more while doing a few poses, then segue the pose into a few struts and strides, then stop and sing again. Then repeat the process. It’s a useful piece of tradecraft and nobody notices the trick.
The thing is that all these varied approaches must be working because nobody complains. It actually does seem as if nobody really expects or probably even WANTS their pop stars to do intense, gymnastic choreography throughout their shows - especially if it rules out live singing. It's damned hard work, takes weeks of rehearsal, and brings the risk of serious injury. So why does Britney bother?
Well, firstly it’s worth remembering the huge part dancing has played in her life. She began taking dancing lessons with Renee Donewar at the age of only 2, long years before she received any vocal coaching, and this was the true foundation of her life as a professional performer. She was receiving intensive dance tuition from age 7, with lessons 3 days a week. In the future, she was to take lessons at the Broadway Dance Centre and receive further coaching in dance during her time as a Mouseketeer.
And she could have made it as a dancer. Before she became famous for singing, she was a member of a group of little girls called The Five Pack who danced and entered competitions, which they usually won - eventually at national level. On the Mickey Mouse Club most of the serious vocal duties were taken by Christina and some of the older Mouseketeers. But such was Britney's dancing talent that Christina felt threatened since she herself could not dance, and the TV documentary “The Rise and Rise of Christina Aguilera” described how this sense of insecurity made her feel the constant need to show off with her voice.
Another factor in Britney’s devotion to dancing was her aptitude for the task. As a child and then teenager, she was extraordinarily athletic, excelling at gymnastics and later at basketball. Flexible, co-ordinated and powerful, bursting with energy and enthusiasm, Britney in her younger days had “ants in her pants” and could hardly stop herself from dancing even if she wanted to.
There was preference. She quite simply loves to dance, and has admitted on occasion that she actually prefers dancing to singing. It's the thought of dancing for thousands of people that gets her motivated. Choreography has always fascinated her, and still does. And she’s getting into it more deeply than ever, since - as she told her fans in a recent letter - she herself choreographed the video for “Do Somethin’”.
Then there’s her nerves. Britney is extremely nervous before a performance, but once she’s up there dancing, she feels comfortable, uninhibited, confident and free. As those of you who play sport will know, you may be nervous before a big match but physical activity takes you out of yourself and gives your adrenaline something to do.
And finally, there has always been her little suspicion that - maybe - that’s where her best talent lies. She has always been extremely modest about her singing abilities - and it’s not false modesty because she’s not that kind of girl. As her mother has said, she’s very hard on herself. She just has more confidence in herself as a dancer than a singer.
Her mother also said that BECAUSE Britney’s so hard on herself, she needs constant reassurance by others that she’s actually any good. Her entourage have failed her in that respect. For example, when she hurt her knee, their automatic reaction was to cancel the rest of the Onyx Hotel tour - as if, without her dancing, the show wouldn’t have been worth seeing. In fact, most of her fans would have turned up to see her singing in a wheelchair.
No doubt she will still be a singer/dancer when next she tours. Whether she’s a dancer who sometimes sings or a singer who sometimes dances is the question that remains to be answered. Sponsorship and insurance issues could be a problem. If she had to give up dancing completely, it would make her feel very vulnerable - maybe that’s why she’s looking around her so much now for all the other opportunities she may have to express her boundless energy and creativity.
It may well be that her growing interest in writing, production, choreography, directing and generally getting on the other side of the camera all come from her fears that she will never be able to cut it purely as a singer and that her dancing days are coming to an end.
And what a loss that would be. The UK tabloids may not have been convinced about Britney’s dancing abilities on the Onyx tour - but they mustn’t have seen her very often, and they can’t have been looking very closely. To most of her fans, the image of Britney in performance is of a thrilling blur of constant motion, a photogenic whirl of blonde hair and shapely limbs, a vision of rhythm in human form.
OK, she does have her limitations. Small of stature, endowed with big boobs, shortish legs, and muscular thighs, she’s not the kind of anorexic shape you find in ballet and she’s more gymnastic than graceful. She’s powerful, strong, flexible and quick, and when she walks, there's little daintiness about her long athletic strides. It’s doubtful that any attempts at ethereal floating would look right for Britney. Robust hyperactivity suits her better.
In a Britney special on UK’s Channel 5 a few years ago, “Thong Song” artist Sisquo was asked what made her dancing so good and he simply said “She’s got a big butt for a white girl!” There seems to be a lot of agreement around the web on that point, with one writer referring to her “heaven-sent behind”! There can be no doubt that “shakin’ that thang” becomes a lot more exciting and rivetting to watch when you’ve got such an excellent “thang” to shake!
Her lack of natural elegance does mean that she is pretty much at the mercy of her choreographers. It’s up to them to decide if she’s going to slink like a cat, writhe like a snake or march like a cheerleader. But once she has her orders she can certainly put them into practice. She has a few signature movements, but no dominant personal style that superimposes itself on the moves designed for her, and that makes her a choreographer’s dream come true.
One of them said she was a delight to work with because she could do anything asked of her, and there was absolutely nothing her dancers could do that she couldn’t. She never complains about how hard she's made to practise and rehearse because she's a perfectionist. Think about it - she can lead a troupe of professional dancers on stage and match them step for step throughout 90-minutes of intense and detailed choreography. That's a measure of just how good she is.
It’s a pity so many of her European critics only know Britney from the Onyx tour, because she deliberately set out to create a show that wasn't so overtly flashy and, as a result, much of the choreography – although detailed enough in terms of stage direction - was rather restrained most of the time, and only likely to be appreciated by those with a good view who knew what they were looking for and were predisposed to like Britney.
In fact, looking at my Live from Miami video again, and much as it pains me to say it, I can almost see where the critics were coming from. The choreography of the Onyx show is more about the totality of movement of all the participants than about Britney's dancing. She really only shows her best moves in The Hook Up, Slave and Boom Boom, with a few seconds of nuclear energy slotted in randomly elsewhere.
The DWAD show on the Live in Las Vegas DVD is a much better place for sceptics to witness what Britney the dancer has to offer. Most of the songs she performs there have complex choreography where she matches her dancers with powerful, athletic moves - and most of them also showcase at least one of the other facets of her talent.
And so in "Oops" we see her shake and vibrate in perfect empathy with the music. In "Crazy" a kind of modern ballet-mime shows off her beautiful body-shape. In "Sometimes" she gives us some gentle, intimate swaying and smoothly executed slow-dancing with a male dancer. And in "Boys", there’s a long series of shapes and poses, flowing effortlessly from one to the next, and some manic hip-wiggling, long before Beyonce adopted it as her trademark.
In "Stronger" she whirls and dips and jigs with some small, intricate steps. On "ILRNR" she strides, spins, dips and wiggles. In "Lonely" she dances against herself on a screen and produces another long sequence of shapes and poses until the dancers arrive. In "Anticipating" Britney and her 2 dancer "girlfriends" put on a little play involving lots of goofy mime-dance and frivolous arm-whirling.
"Slave" starts solo with sensuous, primeval swaying, then dancers appear for an electrifying, erotically-charged workout with turns, kicks, intricate footwork and sexy hip thrusts in magnetic response to the music. "BOMT" (the finale) is full of sexy and sensuous writhing, as liquid and glittering as the rainstorm on stage.
It all adds up to a complete and consummate artist with peerless expressiveness and a very broad portfolio of skills - and it takes a broad portfolio of adjectives to describe her: acrobatic, ambitious, balanced, balletic, challenging, extravagant and flamboyant start us off, and that's only a-to-f!
However, even Live in Las Vegas fails to show us the full scope of her brilliance. It may be a reflection of the choreography, or of how tired she was feeling at the time, but it is noticeable that her legs sometimes appear a little stiff, and some of her dips don’t go very low.
But we only have to go fast forward to late 2003 we find that this isn’t a typical flaw in her technique or gap in her ability, since in the headline promotional appearances for ITZ, live in Times Square and in Gotham Hall, she was breathtaking - as she was for her many TV promos for MATM and Toxic.
In this golden period, she danced with tremendous intensity and fluidity. "Toxic" at Gotham Hall at last gives us those really low dips and a wonderfully sinuous, slinky muscularity. "Breathe on Me" is all feline, libidinous smoothness while the "Boys"/"Slave" medley is the complete opposite, with frantic choreography and violent body popping.
"MATM" at Times Square is a masterclass in how much you can do in an incredibly small space as she completes a fast and furious routine with spins, kicks and complex steps and struts, while "Boom Boom" is an effervescent feast of electrically charged power-choreogaphy with an astonishing variety of hand and arm movements.
It's a pity that this level of virtuosity wasn't really present in the Onyx tour. But even so, those of us who managed to get near the front in one of the Onyx shows were mesmerised by Britney's pneumatic charms, her engaging personality and the jubilant delight she took in being there on the stage with her dancers, and those moments of wild abandon found us charged up by her electricity and grinning and yelling like loons.
And that's what it's really all about. For when we witness Britney Spears on stage at close quarters, we begin to understand what it truly means to be entertained. Here is the most fabulous of showgirls, performing her ass off for us. The girl who "took on the song" - and won! And we are transported to a whole new level of amazement, fun, lightness of spirit and exhilaration. We are changed by it. In the aftermath we are in mourning at its passing. Weeks later we are still thrilled by the memory of it.
One writer has pointed out that, for a tiny girl, Britney Spears looks at least six inches taller and positively Amazonian on stage. It’s a strange optical illusion, but once she presses that magic button marked “perform” she becomes superhuman before our eyes, and suddenly the word "goddess" isn't such hype after all.
 |
