Before Harry Styles took home the coveted Grammy for album of the year Sunday night, he took the stage alongside a team of backup dancers to perform his chart-topping “As It Was.”
The dance number, reminiscent of the song’s official music video, saw Styles and the dancers deliver elaborate moves atop a revolving turntable. On Monday, a couple of those dancers took to social media to address negative reactions to the performance, revealing that the stage rotated in the opposite direction than in their rehearsals.
“12 of us were on the turntable and we rehearsed for 10 days getting down these beautiful formations and sliding off the turntable… and Harry did such a good job integrating into it and had a beautiful duet,” said choreographer Dexter Da Rocha in a TikTok post.
“We were practicing with the turntable counterclockwise and we did it loads of times and got it down to the point where, in dress rehearsal yesterday, it was spotless.”
Unfortunately, when it was time to showcase the number on live television, the turntable started spinning the wrong way.
“To switch all of those patterns around on the spot [without] having even walked in that direction?… Since it’s circular it pulls you in different directions and it’s such a special type of balance so we got accustomed to one way and it was the opposite way so luckily we worked together and did our best and got to one cool formation.”
Impressively, the dancers were also able to pull off an elaborate segment where the camera shot from overhead to showcase the dancers forming one connected, moving line — which was all done backwards, as it turns out.
“Harry did his best to walk and reverse everything while he was singing and reverse his entire duet which is incredible,” Da Rocha said.
Another dancer named Brandon Mathis relayed similar details in his Instagram story. He also posted celebratory shots of the performance and, in a caption dedicated to artistic director Yoann Bourgeois, he wrote, “I am so grateful to you for your trust, your compassion, and your willingness to play and stay soft through it all. Even ridiculous technical difficulties that none of us could have prepared for.”
