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Super Bowl 2022 Unpaid Dancers Overview:
- Who: Dancers who were allegedly asked to perform at the Super Bowl 2022 halftime show but were not offered compensation for 72 hours of rehearsal time are speaking out on social media.
- Why: The dancers say it’s wrong that they are not paid for their time and craft to perform for one of the most-watched sport events of the year.
- Where: Super Bowl 2022 is being held at Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium.
Dancers hired to perform at the Super Bowl 2022 halftime show with Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, Dr. Dre, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar say they have not been offered any payment for the 72 hours of rehearsals they are required to do. They were also asked to sign non-disclosure agreements and pay their own transport.
The dancers are now speaking out on social media about the working conditions, imploring organizers to pay them a fair wage with fair working conditions, the LA Times reports.
The news broke when dancer and dance activist Taja Riley posted about the situation to her more than 100,000 followers on Instagram.
Riley has worked as a paid dancer in two previous Super Bowl halftime shows and did not audition for this year’s performance. The Super Bowl LVI halftime show will be held this year on Feb. 13.
Riley told the LA Times that she felt compelled to speak out after learning that Bloc LA, a prominent agency representing dancers in Los Angeles, had been reaching out to dancers with an “opportunity to volunteer” for the show.
She appealed to halftime show choreographer Fatima Robinson to do better for the dancers, who are predominantly people of color.
“I think that in a performance that is going to highlight predominantly African American movers, African American recording artists and African American culture — Inglewood stand up — I think this is the opportunity … to really step up and do something about this,” she said.
Roc Nation Says Volunteer-Based Cast Is Not Asked To Learn Halftime Choreography
Roc Nation is executive-producing the Super Bowl halftime show. Roc Nation executive vice president of strategy and communications Jana Fleishman told the LA Times that no one working the show had contacted an agency to request professional dancers to volunteer.
“We completely agree that all dancers should be compensated for their craft and that is why we are employing 115 professional dancers performing alongside the headliners,” Fleishman said.
She added that there is a 400-strong volunteer-based, non-choreographed field cast, which is not asked to learn choreography.
However, Riley said, during a pandemic, asking people to volunteer to be in a crowded place—knowing full well many dancers would do it for free for an opportunity to be part of something that could be good for their career—was wrong.
“Four hundred predominantly unpaid Black workers during Black History Month with Black creators and Black artists — this is unacceptable,” she said.
This is not the first critique of the dance industry. In 2019, California exotic dancers secured a $1.6 million settlement resolving claims that Seventh Veil, Royal Palace and Crazy Girls dancers were misclassified as independent contractors instead of employees and were underpaid.
Do you think the volunteers should be paid, too? Let us know in the comments!
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