I Stand with the Unpaid Super Bowl Dancers
In Addition to Standing With them, I Also Danced and Waved A Flag With Them
America was shocked when professional dancer Taja Riley revealed that the Super Bowl — the most viewed broadcast of the year, the thing America is most proud of now that we’ve turned on democracy — doesn’t pay its volunteer halftime dancers. I was not.
While much attention is given to my work as an author, commentator, and lover, surprisingly little is focused on my dance career. No offense to the members of the Bolshoi ballet, but my artistry reached 30 percent of America whereas they are not even in America.
As a backup dancer for Beyonce, Shania Twain, Gwen Stefani, Sting, Carlos Santana, and Michelle Branch at the 2003 Super Bowl, I performed in a way that caused Rolling Stone to rank it the 17th best halftime show ever. Sure the writer referred to Twain’s performance as “a career-freezing sadgasm” but imagine how much sadgasm-ier it would have been if, among 500 high-school girls, there wasn’t a long-haired 31-year-old guy in a low-cut sparkly blue shirt and matching jazz pants waving an 30-foot bamboo pole with a giant flag of a saxophone? Probably a glumcum.
So I know the injustice of doing 14 hours of rehearsal with a heavy saxophone flag for nothing other than…
