Harry Styles’ backup dancers have revealed the turntable rotated in the wrong direction during his performance at the 2023 Grammy Awards on Sunday night.
The British singer took to the stage at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles to perform his track, As It Was, accompanied by 12 dancers who pulled off a routine on a circular rotating platform next to Harry and his band.
Addressing the negative reaction to the performance on Monday, dancer Dexter Da Rocha revealed in a since-deleted TikTok post that they rehearsed for 10 days with the turntable moving anti-clockwise – but it started spinning in the opposite direction during their big moment on live TV.
“To switch all of those patterns around on the spot (without) having even walked in that direction?” Dexter said. “Since it’s circular it pulls you in different directions and it’s such a special type of balance so we got accustomed to one way and it was the opposite way so luckily we worked together and did our best and got to one cool formation.”
“Harry did his best to walk and reverse everything while he was singing and reverse his entire duet which is incredible,” he added.
Another dancer named Brandon Mathis shared a similar account on his Instagram Stories.
“The moment the curtain opened and it was time to perform, our turntable started spinning in reverse, backward, freaking all of us out, on live television, and there was nothing we could do to stop it,” he stated.
Despite the technical glitch, Harry had a big night at the Grammys as he took home two awards, including Album of the Year for Harry’s House.
The 29-year-old has been criticised online for saying, “This doesn’t happen to people like me very often” in his acceptance speech, with many users calling him tone-deaf for not recognising his privilege.