Dance fans are familiar with Brittany Cherry as a Season 10 contestant on So You Think You Can Dance and as a Dancing With the Stars troupe member. This year, she’s tackling a new role behind the scenes in Season 2 of World of Dance.
Brittany was a part of NappyTabs’ creative team as a supervising choreographer. She shared that role with Matt Cady, best known as the creator of the crew Fanny Pak, and Anthony Kin, a longtime collaborator with NappyTabs.
“I reached out to Nappy Tabs last year and let them know I would like to work with them again,” she said to Dance Network. “It’s been four years since I worked with them on ‘Thinking Out Loud.’ I wanted to do more choreography and learn about it. I wanted to be around their creativity.”
A few months later they reached out to Brittany and offered her a position on Season 2 of World of Dance. The job turned out to be a diverse one.
“There are so many different styles on the show and the supervising choreographers rotated with the contestants based on their needs,” she explained. “If a hip-hop group wanted to do more feminine movement, they would bring me in to assess the piece. Our job isn’t to choreograph for the contestants, our jobs are to guide and suggest to make the number TV-ready.”
The goal was to help the contestants understand that choreographing for the camera is much different from choreographing for the stage. The pieces needed to be as polished as possible for television.
“We would go in there, watch them rehearse and give suggestions,” Brittany shared. “Sometimes they wouldn’t necessarily agree with our suggestions and that’s fine. We were there to offer opinions and guidance.”
One of the biggest challenges for new competitors on World of Dance was the stage in the round.
“The round stage was difficult because there is an LED floor. For a few of the contestants, it made them dizzy. But it’s a stage, it’s your friend — I am sure you are going to be able to find your spot which is often J.Lo,” she laughed.
The show offered an experience of a lifetime for Brittany because of the valuable behind-the-scenes lessons she learned on the job.
“I learned how to articulate myself properly. I am a person who wants to get up and dance with everybody,” she said. “But I need to take a step back and articulate with words to get them to see what I see in their piece. That’s difficult for dancers because we just want to dance. It’s a level of being creative, but in a different way.”
Her supervising choreographer role also made her aware of how hard every team member works to get one number ready for television.
“I learned a lot about production and how a creative team works. From music clearance to communicating with the director and wardrobe — how does everyone work together as one?” Brittany explained. “World of Dance is massive because we have contestants in four different categories with a variety of ages and size of each dance group — from one dancer to an entire crew. It takes a village.”
With her experience comes a wealth of advice for other young dancers who might want to jump into different roles within the dance industry.
“We work in an industry full of relationships and maintaining relationships. People aren’t mind readers, you have to tell them what you want to get those opportunities.”
Brittany has seized opportunities like this because she knows nothing is just handed to you in Hollywood.
“I was voted off first on So You Think You Can Dance. It’s not like I had some big moment on the show. It’s all about connections,” she said. “If you’re a pleasure to work with, people are going to hire you — being punctual, being professional and being on top of it while you are on set goes so much further than what you have on your résumé. It’s all about your work ethic. You may not be the best dancer, but if you’re a hard worker, you will get hired.”
Brittany hopes to join the creative team again for Season 3 of World of Dance because this one job has opened up an entirely new world of possibilities for her.
“I love dancing, I love performing and I’m going to continue doing that, but I see myself going down this road more and more,” she summed up. “I want to jump on these opportunities. I think this is a route I am organically steering towards.”
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