Did It For The Gram
How social media has infected the dance industry.
“How to get your NEEDLE in ONE DAY!” reads the title of a YouTube video by Gabriella Whited, a smaller Youtuber who at the time posted mainly dance-related tutorials and content.
A needle is a contortion trick where someone grabs their leg from behind with both hands and straightens their leg into a standing split position. This trick requires an insane amount of back, leg, and shoulder flexibility that is not widely common amongst dancers.
Tricks like these have surfaced through social media in the past few years. With the rise of YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter were able to share posts of moves the dance world hadn’t seen twenty years ago. We are pushing the limits of what the human body is capable of by constantly trying to one-up these images.
While social media is a part of our everyday lives, the overall effect is harmful to young dancers growing up today. It sets unrealistic standards within the dance industry as well as cause serious injury to dancers as they attempt social media dance trends.
The social media dance world is setting unrealistic standards within the dance industry today. Dancers today are expected to curate their social media in order to get noticed. It can be incredibly hard to stand out when there’s an abundance of dancers with huge social media followings.
Taylor Hatala, a 16-year-old dancer from Edmonton, Alberta initially rose to fame when a video was posted to YouTube of her doing Lawrence Kaiwai’s choreography to “Anaconda” by Nicki Minaj. Five years later she’s danced backup for Janet Jackson and Justin Bieber, competed on season 2 of NBC’s World of Dance, and has over 1.2 million followers on Instagram
In the article “Dance influencers see social media as their calling card” (2019) Hatala talks about how while you used to hand in your resume on paper at auditions, lots of casting directors now look at your social media.
She goes on to say that she feels pressure to make sure that her social media posts are perfect, that people in this generation have a short attention span and will scroll past something that isn’t of interest to them. However, she still wants to remain authentic to her followers and still come off as human.
Hatala talks about how there is an immense pressure to make your mark on social media. This can be especially difficult today when competing against short videos of dancers doing flashy tricks.
Theresa Ruth Howard, former dancer with Dance Theatre of Harlem and editor for Dance Magazine, describes these videos in her article “Is Instagram Changing the Dance Worlds Value System?” (2018) as being “dance erotica” where the dancers in them are painted in a Vaudevillian freak show light.
For the longest time dancers weren’t required to have crazy hyper flexibility where you call pull your leg behind your head. Now because the dance world is so competitive, choreographers want the best of the best who can do it all.
Howard goes on to say that while the videos seem harmless in nature, they are setting a new standard within the industry that young dancers are aspiring to.
To add to this, these new standards have even been used to try and discredit famous dancers. The girls from the show “Dance Moms” are widely recognized throughout the dance community as being very talented and they have impressive resumes to back this up. However, many people like to question whether they are as talented as they are made out to be on the show.
In a Reddit forum “Are the girls on the show good dancers?” started by a user named LadyShihita in 2018, users go on to say that the girls wouldn’t win at a real, not staged competition like the ones on the show, as well as they break down the technique of everyone on the show.
Not even young dance celebrities are not immune to the heightened expectations brought on by social media. They themselves still face the wrath of judgmental critics.
When young dancers see these famous dancers being heavily scrutinized on social media, they start to think that if the dancers on television and the internet aren’t good enough, then there’s no way they are.
Attempting dance moves seen on social media can lead to serious, career-ending injury.
Without proper training and guidance, a dancer can be putting their body at serious risk. In the news article “Dancers injured copying overstretching exercises from social media” written by Lesley Robinson and Sarah Whyte (2016) dance physiotherapist Lisa Howell speaks on the growing rate of injuries in younger dancers:
“Now we’re seeing labral tears (tear in hip joint) and issues in their back in 11 and 12-year-olds, which is very disconcerting because while they’re doing these things to make themselves better dancers, they are often actually ruling themselves out of a professional career because they are getting injuries so young.”
Howell is saying that due to the rising trend of Instagram tricks, younger dancers are attempting these moves to become more advanced, but due to the lack of proper training are seriously injuring themselves.
Because social media is accessible to everyone this phenomenon is affecting younger and younger girls. They see dancers doing these tricks on Instagram and they assume that they must be able to do that if they want to be a good dancer. This leads to dancers trying dangerous tricks at home without proper training leading to injuries that require surgery and could cost them their whole career.
Howells point of view is supported by the statements made in the same news article by Aaron Matheson and Charlotte Conners. Both were practicing tricks at home, Aaron attempted to do a scorpion (another term for a needle) and felt a painful twinge in his back that ended up being a stress fracture.
Charlotte was following along to a YouTube video when the carpet slipped from underneath her and she dislocated her coccyx.
These are perfect examples of what Howell is referring to, two young dancers who injured themselves attempting tricks they saw on social media. What’s scary about this is that there is now a demand for studios to teach these moves, and not every dance teacher is qualified.
In the article “Is Instagram Changing the Dance World’s Value System?” written by Theresa Ruth Howard in 2018, Howard argues that while there’s nothing wrong with learning these tricks, if you only focus on teaching a dancer tricks and flexibility, you are not training a strong dancer, and not having the proper technical training can lead to injury.
This is an issue because if a young dancer gets a serious injury like a labral tear or stress fracture when they’re very young it can become an issue for them for the rest of their career. In some cases, injuries are so extreme that doctors suggest that they shouldn’t dance anymore, especially if the injury occurred while the dancer is still growing.
Another issue with the focus of tricks in training is that teachers lose sight of teaching the roots of technique, where dance evolved from. I know plenty of dancers who can do a tilt but have no idea who Gus Giordano or Merce Cunningham are. There needs to be a continuing focus on foundation technique, which is seriously lacking in most competition dance studios today.
The rise of social media has drastically changed the dance world. The standards are higher for both the physicality of a dancer and their overall influence. This change has a negative effect on the confidence of young dancers as they feel that if they don’t meet these standards that they are not cut out to work in the industry.
This is not to say that a dancer should never use social media. They should however be mindful of what on their Instagram feed can be used as inspiration and what is just for show.
