Growing up in St. Louis, Tierra Brown danced all the time—on dance teams, in talent shows. At the time, everyone else was trying to move like Janet Jackson. Brown found Aaliyah more inspiring and wanted to be her backup dancer someday. As she studied the dancers in music videos, she says, she’d think, “‘Oh, that was a good move’ or ‘She’s really killing with the choreography.’ It wasn’t like, ‘What do I need to do to get to where these people are?’”
After moving to Atlanta for college, she found herself in a formal dance studio for the first time, taking classes. In 2005, a couple of agents from Atlanta’s Xcel Talent Agency sat in. “And I got signed right there on the spot,” she says. “That’s how the dancing thing happened with me.”
Since then, she’s been the principal dancer for some of the biggest acts in hip-hop and R&B, including Beyoncé, Young Jeezy,
R. Kelly, and Ludacris. She’s danced at the Soul Train Awards, VH1’s tribute to Def Jam Recordings, BET’s Hip-Hop Awards (with Snoop Dogg), and twice for the MTV Video Music Awards, with Ciara and Beyoncé, respectively. She’s even done a gig with Cirque du Soleil. Most recently, she’s toured with Ciara and Keri Hilson.
Her big break, in 2006, was with R. Kelly—appropriate, considering that he was the late Aaliyah’s mentor and wrote a number of the songs on her debut album.
“It was my first major tour—43 cities, four months, traveling across the country,” she says. “I learned a lot during that tour, just small things, like spacing and staging, sound checks. If the stage is too small or too big, you have to modify it. If wardrobe isn’t right, you have to modify things. But it was also about learning to be on time, keeping your things in order, contracts, making sure you got your check on time, things of that
nature.
“And it was a winter tour,” she remembers. “It was cold! I started off in November with two bags, and by the time it was over, I had like five. And it was the first time I’d ever been away from home for so long.”
She also danced on Beyoncé’s I Am… Tour, “dancing with 60 girls doing ‘Single Ladies,’ all in silver…” It was, she recalls, intense.
Beyoncé “definitely has a work ethic that’s out of this world,” Brown says. “She wants it to be perfect. She wants you to be perfect… Her energy was way over the top. She definitely takes over, in a good way. She’s a force to be reckoned with when you are onstage with her.”
Brown’s favorite video experience, she says, was dancing in The-Dream’s “I Luv Your Girl.” Not only was she a fan of the song, the choreographer was also another St. Louis expat, Jamaica Craft. “We literally learned that song in two days,” Brown says. She also loved working on the video for Lloyd’s “How We Do It (Around My Way),” featuring rapper Ludacris.
“That was fun, because it was more about personalities, and freestyle,” she says. “But Jamaica choreographed that video, too. There were lots of girls and lots of guys, and we did like the Soul Train line, so everyone had their chance to shine for the camera.”
Because her career unfolded out of a pure love of dance, it took Brown some time to get used to the hard-nosed nature of the music business. She quickly learned she had to read and understand the fine print in every contract she signed. And after going through auditions where she’d felt like she’d aced it, but didn’t get the job, she began to realize that it wasn’t always about passion or talent. “Sometimes, it’s about a look,” she says. “I’m a tall girl…and you find out you didn’t make it because you’re the only tall one, and you wonder, ‘Why does it matter?’ And then it’s like, ohh-kay, well, the artist is not tall. So he or she may not want tall dancers.” (By the way, for those who are wondering, Brown is 5-foot-7.)
She says her goal is to dance for as long as she can, though she knows the industry is bursting with talented performers, and no one knows how long a career will last. She’d like to come back to St. Louis and open a dance studio. She’d also like to teach seminars on the business ins and outs of dancing for a living, like how to train.
“You’re an artist, but you’re also an athlete,” she says. “You’re dancing for hours at a time… You’ve got to keep your stamina up.” She’d also like to work as a fashion stylist for videos. “Dancers need clothes that fit, shoes that move,” she says, by way of example. “We don’t need all this jewelry. Because I’m coming from a dance perspective, that’s something I can contribute.”
When SLM spoke to her in December, Brown was preparing to leave on an overseas tour with Ciara, who releases another album this year, with stops in Dubai, Congo, Angola, and Nigeria. Keri Hilson’s coming out with a new album this year, too—and Brown will also dance on that tour. She knows how over-the-top that schedule sounds.
“It’ll be tiring,” she says, laughing. “But I’m gonna love it.”
Find Brown on the Web at twitter.com/teebreezy or wix.com/tierraworlddancer/br.
