Michael Schwandt, who choreographed this year’s Miss Universe pageant, has spent the past four years working with some of the sexiest women in the world. In this exclusive Anyguey interview, he tells us what it was like teaching Heidi Montag to dance.
So, of course, we have to ask about Heidi Montag. What was it like working with her?
I’ve actually not seen most of The Hills, so I think that was a good thing going into this because, y’know, I heard from so many friends, “Oh my God I can’t believe you’re working with her.” But she was actually super, super nice and she was very driven on this project. She rehearsed her butt off. I think we had initially scheduled about fifteen rehearsals, which is a lot for a 2 ½ minute performance.
So how many– how long was that rehearsal process? If you’re scheduling 15 rehearsals, what’s the total amount of time that’s going into that?
We kept them at about three or four hours, because I knew she was not a dancer and I didn’t want to overwhelm her. Plus, she’s got a busy shooting schedule. So we kept them to about three to four hours.
That performance was rehearsed for forty-five hours?
Yeah. We actually ended up adding more. She wanted to add more because she wanted to be more prepared. I actually only had two weeks of rehearsal with her and then I had to leave her with an assistant choreographer, and then that assistant had to go to join me at Miss Universe so then the dance captain took over for the last week, the lead dancer on the project. And the dancers themselves had, I think, four rehearsals in LA and then two rehearsals in the Bahamas. But she was very nice, very accommodating. Even all the way up to the moment we were backstage, she was just praising me for helping her get to that point, praising me for connecting her with the dancers who she loves and wants to use in the music video. It was all good. And I know that’s not what most people want to hear, but that’s the truth.
Did you see her after the performance? What was her reaction?
Of course I saw her right after and she was just on cloud nine. She was just ecstatic. I will say she’s not a dancer, and one of the reasons we worked so hard is because she wants to be a pop star, and she wants to be able to move. And I think, given that she’s never danced on stage before, I thought she did really, really well.
I try not to read what people say, and I looked at some of the YouTube comments and things like that and there were people ripping her apart. And I’ve seen a lot worse performances by some pretty big name celebrities on award shows. I mean, really. Katy Perry is not the best dancer, and she did a pretty poor performance, in my opinion, at the Grammy Awards and nobody slammed her. And I think what Heidi did was actually pretty on par with some of the pop celebrities out there today.
I think people are being unusually mean to her because they don’t like her for whatever reason, but I honestly think that she did the best that she could, and I think that her performance, comparatively to a lot of other pop stars out there, was actually pretty much right on. And that’s how I feel about it. People are just being unusually mean to her because they don’t like her for this, that or the other reason. Whatever your reasons are, whether or not you think she deserves to have an album, that’s neither here or there. I look at it as what the individual performance was and I thought she did a good job.
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