It wasn’t the same as it was.
Harry Styles had quite the night at the 65th Grammy Awards, but it wasn’t perfect.
The 29-year-old singer, who took home the Best Pop Vocal Album award and the coveted Album of the Year award for “Harry’s House,” performed his hit single “As It Was” — but things took a turn.
His dancers have revealed on social media that the stage — which was a spinning turntable, similar to the song’s music video — spun in the opposite direction than the way they rehearsed.
“What you don’t know is that the moment the curtained opened and it was time to perform, our turntable starting spinning in reverse, backward, freaking all of us out on live television, and there was nothing we could do to stop it,” dancer Brandon Mathis said in an Instagram story, which has since been reposted to TikTok.
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“So after a week of rehearsing this piece perfectly going [one] way, the moment it’s time to perform, it starts going [the other way],” Mathis continued. “In real-time, we have to troubleshoot and try to do a complete piece in reverse. Talk about professionalism.”
Dancer and choreographer Dexter Da Rocha went more in-depth about the situation on TikTok, explaining how the whole rehearsal process went down.
“We rehearsed for 10 days getting down these beautiful formations and sliding off the table in a roll-off and just making this incredible, morphing, cool artistic s–t and Harry did such a good job integrating into it,” Da Rocha said in the since-deleted TikTok video.
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“This whole time we were practicing it with the turntable turning counterclockwise. It was difficult and it was frustrating making those patterns while something’s moving and having all this spatial awareness,” the choreographer continued. “At dress rehearsal, it was gorgeous, it was amazing. We get on stage for the performance, the performance starts and the turntable starts going the wrong way.”
The dancers even tried to get the technician’s attention but had no luck since it was on live TV and they “couldn’t yell” to make sure they were heard.
“To switch all those patterns around on the spot, having not even walked in that direction, it sounds easy. Since it’s circular, it pulls you in different directions and is such a special type of balance. We got accustomed to one way, and it was the opposite way,” Da Rocha added. “So, luckily we worked together and did our best and got to one cool formation in time for the overhead shot but had to change the rest.”
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Da Rocha explained that Styles “did his best to be able to walk and reverse everything while he was singing and reverse his entire duet,” but the whole performance wasn’t a walk in the park since they were all “just trying to f–king stay standing.”
“So, unfortunately the world didn’t get to see the beautiful work of Yoann Bourgeois or all of our dancers work and Harry’s beautiful f—king job, but he won Album of the Year, which is incredible, and we all have a story to tell. It was still such a f—king incredible experience. He’s so nice and cool and hard-working and just made the rehearsal process so beautiful so what a f—ing wild ride,” the dancer said.
“You can try and control s—t that goes wrong, you can resist against it, or you can just make the best of it and work together and do your f—king best, so have a happy Monday,” Da Rocha concluded.
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Mathis also praised Bourgeois in an Instagram post, writing, “To spend a week immersed in your brilliant mind is nothing short of amazing. And I am so grateful to you for your trust, your compassion, and your willingness to play and stay soft through it all. Even ridiculous technical difficulties that none of us could have prepared for.”
Styles has not said anything about the incident, but he probably hoped the turntable would stay spinning in one direction.
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