How to become justin bieber dancer
A Day In the Life of a Justin Bieber Backup Dancer
At 9:50 a.m. on the morning after his 65th Justin Bieber concert, dancer David Shreibman was standing, but just barely. The 27-year-old “Purpose” tour backup b-boy was decked out in full concert merch, wearing a recognizable “Staff” t-shirt. Unlike most people though, he actually is a Bieber employee, and has been dancing for him on-and-off for the past five years.
“My back hurts,” Shreibman said with a laugh. Although this is his first world tour with Bieber, Shreibman is used to the demanding lifestyle of a dancer. He’s been dancing professionally since he was 15-years-old, traveling around the world for breakdancing battles, dancing for the Golden State Warriors, and doing backup for artists like Chris Brown, Gwen Stefani, and Tinashe. In 2014, he was cast in the film “Step Up: All In,” and he’s currently filming a documentary-style series called “The Break Boys,” with Red Bull TV.
Since January, however, Shreibman’s universe has revolved entirely around Justin Bieber. When Shreibman’s not on stage, he’s being bused around with 15 other dancers from arena to arena. And even in his “down time,” he’s playing soccer and wake-boarding with “J.B.” As a result, thousands of screaming girls follow him around as well. The morning after their final U.S. show, Shreibman broke down a day in the life of a Bieber backup dancer.
When did you start dancing? I started break dancing at 10 years old, but both my parents are dancers. My mom was a ballet and jazz teacher but she professionally danced for 10 years. And my dad was a professional pantomime…
What! A mime? Yeah. He started on the East Coast but then went on to train with this famous guy named Marcel Marceau. He was a huge French pantomime. So I grew up around dancing and dancers.
So can you pantomime really well? Me? No. I should be able to. I can fake it.
What was your big break, pun intended. There’s a b-boy community, and I was a little kid who got good at it really fast.
My name started getting around the Bay Area. And then I got in one of the bigger crews from San Francisco called The Renegades in 2005. I’d say my big break in the scene though was after I won this big battle in Florida in 2006. It sent me to France to compete in 2007. It was right when YouTube became big, and I think that’s been a big part of my success; I was one of the first young guys to be on YouTube a lot. I’ve been professionally dancing since I was 15.
When did you start dancing for Justin Bieber? I’ve been dancing for Bieber off-and-on for about five years. This is my first tour with him. They didn’t bring b-boys on the “Believe” tour. But for this tour we started rehearsing in January. It was a big decision because tours are such a commitment; they pull you away from life for such a long time. The tour started in March and last night was the last show in the U.S. We did 65 shows. My back hurts! My knees hurt! I’m tired!
Where was your first show? Holy crap, I can’t even remember.
Are you on stage the whole time? Pretty much. He does 19 songs and I’d say I’m in around 13 of them.
What’s it like being on stage in front of all those people? I’m used to arena shows because I did the “Glee Live” tour two years in a row. And then I also danced for the Golden State Warriors when I was 15. But it’s an interesting experience dancing with Bieber because we can’t hear the audience. All you’re hearing is Bieber’s voice and the choreographer talking to us throughout the show. It’s like you’re in your own world. This is the first time I’ve ever done a show like that.
Does that help you dance? To be honest, no. I think a lot of dancing is energy-based and hearing the crowd helps. It’s different for Bieber though because it’s 20,000 screaming girls. It’s like white noise. By the 40th show, you’re like, not trying to hear that much screaming. It’s insane. I took my ears out last night because it was the last show and it was SO loud.
When he goes into, “Baby,” it’s crazy. I had to cover my ears.
Do Bieber’s fans find you? Oh my god, yes. Any hotel we’re at. They stalk. They find the dancers and think that Bieber is where the dancers are. They’re everywhere, just lingering. They know our names. They try to give us stuff to give to him. My DM’s are insane: “Please! I traveled all the way from Africa and my car broke down and my mom has cancer.” It’s crazy.
How are you dealing with all that? It sucks because you have to be a dick. You have to ignore them. They don’t care about you; they’re just like, “Where’s Justin!” We’ll have after parties and J.B. will go and we kind of turn into a type of security. The way people act around him isn’t normal. He’s like a zoo animal. They’re zombies.
That’s scary. It’s really scary. I don’t like that side of it. A part of me feels bad for him. He can’t do anything.
Do have a routine before you go on stage every night? Not really.
It’s not like a battle where I have to get into this headspace and I’m challenged more creatively. This is more like job. It’s automatic after 65 shows.
Does Bieber have a routine? Yeah, we always do a pre-show prayer. He looks to us for energy, so it’s more about us getting him hype. All the dancers — there are 16 of us — and the band get in a circle and start yelling. He likes doing the “Mighty Ducks” chant: Ducks! Ducks! Ducks! Quack! Quack! Quack!
Have their been any moments on tour when things did not go according to routine? Yes. I had one really scary situation. There are these things under the stage called “toasters,” and at the beginning of every show we get launched from them. Like, literally imagine what a toaster does with bread. It’s this 4′ x 4′ hole that we get shot out of probably around 10-feet in the air. Every night in two different numbers. On those nights when you don’t feel like doing the show, you’re like, “Shit, I gotta get launched right now!” Anyway, one night there was a power failure… Normally, the toaster stays up with you so that you’re not falling 10 feet onto the floor.
But on that night, I’m launched, the power dies, and it falls back down. I was in the air, I look down, and there’s literally a hole in the floor. If I hadn’t looked down, who knows what would have happened. But I fell all the way down and luckily, I’m a ninja or something, I don’t know, but I didn’t get hurt. But it was really bad and not cool. I could have gotten really fucked up. It was probably top three scariest things that have ever happened to me.
You’re putting your life on the line every night for the Biebs! Yeah. These stages are like construction sites; you have to be really careful. Things fall out of the sky if someone doesn’t rig it right. There’s a part of the show where we’re suspended on a trampoline 30-feet above everybody. I’m like a circus freak.
Do you ever interact with Bieber off-stage? Yeah, tons. He’s an extremely talented kid. He’s a good kid. And he’s…a kid! He’s 22 and he’s still finding himself like we all are. His life is crazy.
He was separated from the world at 10-years-old. He’s really generous. He’s goofy. He likes to play around. Like the other day, Bieber wanted to play soccer. He goes on our buses and wakes us all up like, “We’re going to play soccer!” He takes us to this sporting store and buys us all these jerseys and any cleats we want. Then he divided us into teams. We’ve also gone wake-boarding. He’s cool.
You’re like his friends, in a way. Yeah, I think he respects the dancers and every night he tells us how much he appreciates us. There are a lot of people who’ve been working with him since he was literally a child. It’s a good crew.
Does he inspire you? He’s definitely inspirational, but would I want that life? No. I’ve seen it. And not only with Bieber — I’ve worked with Chris Brown, Gwen Stefani, Tinashe, and all these people and it’s not easy. There’s no school that prepares these kids for this type of stuff. It’s not normal what they deal with. That’s what’s cool about being a professional dancer: I get to live that life, but just for a second.
Are you looking forward to a little break from Bieber before the European tour? I’m just looking forward to not toasting.
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Can Justin Bieber Dance?
Justin Bieber has loved performing since he started gaining popularity and stage presence back in 2007. But can the star dance?
Justin Bieber can dance. Though dancing is not the main event of Bieber’s performances, he has worked with some of the best choreographers in the world and loves performing in front of worldwide audiences.
Read more below to find out about Bieber’s dancing, his choreographers, and why one of his tours was canceled midway through.
Bieber’s Dance Moves
Justin Bieber’s songs have long inspired people to dance, shown in tweets by fans like this one, which reads, “they’re playing one time – Justin Bieber rn in the store and it’s taking everything in me not to start singing and dancing around,” or this one which says, “you may not want to admit it but sometimes you just have to go back to 2009 and have a full dance party to baby by justin bieber in your bedroom.”
So Bieber’s music is known for making others want to bust a move, but can he dance himself? His many routines on stage and in music videos throughout his career after working with renowned choreographers prove that he can.
One of his first choreographers was Nick DeMoura, who worked on the Believe Tour which started in 2012 and included 150 shows all over the world in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia.
DeMoura also worked on Bieber’s music video for the song “Beauty and a Beat,” as well as So You Think You Can Dance, and has won many awards for both his dancing and his choreography.
The choreographer of Bieber’s Purpose World Tour, the worldwide tour for his fourth album released in 2015, was Emma Portner. Portner also both choreographed and starred in the music video of Bieber’s song “Life Is Worth Living.”
Parris Goebel is another, more recent choreographer that Bieber has worked with, as she choreographed his music video for the song “Sorry,” which won Video of the Year at the 2016 American Music Awards, and also choreographed all of the videos for Justin Bieber’s Purpose: The Movement. Goebel has also worked with other world-famous celebrities like Rihanna, Jennifer Lopez, Nicki Minaj, Janet Jackson, BLACKPINK, Shakira, and more.
Check out the YouTube video below to watch Justin Bieber’s best dance breaks over the years, a compilation put together by PopCrush.
Tour Cancellation
It’s well known how much Bieber loves to put on a show for his fans, but some things can make him stop dancing, whether he wants to or not. During Bieber’s worldwide tour of his fourth album, Purpose, Justin became very sick.
In a recent interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Bieber talked about why he canceled the rest of the tour and what it was like for him. “I was really tired emotionally, physically, and I was sick and I didn’t realize I was sick.”
“So I had Epstein-Barr, which is like, it’s called Mono. And then I have Lyme disease. So it was that, it was just the exhaustion of just being on tour, and then it was just everything compounded, I think, to be honest,” he explained.
While fans were disappointed about the cancellation at the time, and that they would miss his beloved dance moves, the much more pressing worry was Bieber’s health.
Both he and his wife Hailey made sure that he was at his best before returning to a busy schedule of performing.
When asked about how he deals with Lyme disease, he said, “I think just making sure that I am just doing the right treatments for it, doing the right IVs and all that sort of stuff. Taking the necessary precautions, necessary to not get any worse, I guess. Listen to Hailey when she says she feels that I’m run down… She can let me know when, like, ‘All right, you’re looking depleted right now.’”
School dances - Kommersant Saint-Petersburg
19-year-old singer from Canada showed the program of his "Believe" tour in the JCC. Fans of Justin Bieber, who call themselves "beliebers", during the concert waited for one of them to be chosen by the musician's management in order to get on stage. Such a girl receives a wreath and is named after the song she sings "One Less Lonely Girl". ALEXEY LUBIMOV studied how the singer attracts his young audience.
Justin Bieber still resembles a schoolboy in his artistic manifestations
Photo: Kirill Belyaev, Kommersant
The "OLLG" number at the Justin Bieber show in different cities fulfills the dream of one of the young listeners.
You can be on the hardware "throne" in a pink-purple wreath next to the singer and give your name. At the end of the song, together with the girl, the singer runs backstage, the schoolgirls in the hall rejoice.
The musician has grown up, domestic "beliebers" are already counting down the fourth year of worship, but it is too early for him to complete the "boy-boy-man" scheme. Justin Bieber still resembles a schoolboy in his artistic expressions. At the same time, at the initial stage, he did without participating in the TV show "The Mickey Mouse Club", from where some teenage stars of past years came out. Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera - all of them were controlled by adults from childhood. And Justin Bieber, with the help of YouTube and his mother's blessing, has moved almost on his own. Along the way, he hooked on manager Scooter Brown, who has been taking care of him ever since.
The concert began with the fact that after numerous pyrotechnic explosions Justin Bieber like a new Prometheus, to the music from the Ridley Scott film, descended on the stage on wings.
And in an hour and a half, a fragment of the composition "Life" by Mark Straitenfeld turned out to be the few that could seriously be called related to music. Beliebers do not hide the fact that for them the most important thing in a performer is appearance. Although some songs, such as "As Long As You Love Me" or "Baby", may evoke a response from music lovers.
The audience at the concert was persistently told that Justin Bieber is capable of more than what he shows as a musician or dancer. His repeated rises - whether on wings, on circling (with the songs "Be Alright" and "Fall") or on lifting (with "As Long As You Love Me") platforms - seemed to say that he is available to everyone, but you have to watch still below. It's easier for an artist to soar than to change their hairstyle.
Justin Bieber's speeches between songs contained the mantra "my fans" and were dedicated to milestones in his career - the first shows on the Internet or the second record. And finally, about faith as a companion of dreams.
Boxer Gennady Mabukin from Vasily Aksenov's "Poem of Ecstasy" spoke in a similar way: "Question:" How did you manage to achieve such success in sports? "Answer: "Only by hard work." Girl's question: "Why are you so beautiful?" Answer: "Only hard work."
In the videos, Justin Bieber swam among the naiads and scattered paparazzi commandos. In the song "Beauty and a Beat", the assisting singer Nicki Minaj was shown on the screens (thanks to her, the song wins significantly). Along with Justin Bieber were a dozen dancers who looked like schoolgirls and schoolchildren, and musicians who looked like experts in soul and blues. A noteworthy moment of the show is Justin Bieber's solo drums, when his drummer Melvin "Melli Mel" Baldwin was emphatically silent - and the singer managed to show himself worthy.
Then the monotonous dances resumed, which looked ridiculous even twenty years ago, during the heyday of boy bands. And songs in which it is difficult to catch the melodies. It would not be easy for even the most gifted housewife to sing them - the audience did not succeed either.
At the end of the song "As Long As You Love Me", Justin Bieber tried to persuade the audience in the stands to rise for a couple of minutes. Like, I'm grimacing and dancing in front of you, and we're not at a baseball game - this is a party. Some in the sectors stood up, and even one woman was a police lieutenant, but still not everyone was able to respond to the request.
Picture of the day
| 3DNews Technologies and IT market. News acoustics, home theater, receivers CES 2012: mRobo - dancing speaker from T... The most interesting in the reviews 01/15/2012 [15:18], Konstantin Khodakovsky At CES 2012, Canadian pop star Justin Bieber and Vietnamese toymaker TOSY Robotics collaborated to unveil something obscure both in concept and execution: the portable mRobo Ultra Bass speaker, which doubles as a dancing robot when in these movements one can find at least a shadow of the choreography. The device-dancer weighing 1.5 kg is supplied in a folded form in the form of a box measuring 10.9 × 16 × 20 cm, and after switching on, its limbs are released and the head is removed from the body - a diffuser is placed on the stomach, capable of delivering bass to level 40 Hz. When transformed, mRobo's height is over 45 cm. From a technical point of view, the player is equipped with 2 GB of internal memory and a USB port, powered by a battery. Built-in Bluetooth-adapter allows you to wirelessly output sound to the speaker. The choice of sound recordings is carried out by means of the control panel supplied in the kit. mRobo can perform clumsy movements, called dance, not only to the beat of the music played by itself, but also by perceiving compositions from other devices. The developers note that this is only a prototype, but at the same time they call mRobo "the most innovative and interactive entertainment device ever presented." Well, there are doubts that consumers will agree with such an assessment of the product, especially since the recommended retail price of the novelty is $200, and the launch will have to wait until the fall of 2012.  .
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