14 DAY TRIAL // It’s been a few days since the Miss Universe beauty pageant took place but, for some reason or another, the media is still ablaze with talk of the show, and of one performance in particular. Heidi Montag, reality television star with her sight set on becoming a pop artist, performed her latest single, “Body Language,” during the competition, in what turned out to be an epic fail, one of the most “embarrassing” and “horrible” shows of our times.
Still, it was not her fault, Michael Schwandt, who choreographed this year’s edition of the pageant, tells Guanabee. The choreographer admits to working for no less than 45 hours with Montag, rehearsing the awkward routine of which many said she had come up with herself. Heidi is not a dancer, Schwandt says by means of defending herself in the media, and people should just put their hate of her aside and admit the obvious: for a non-dancer, Montag did pretty good at the Miss Universe show, better than many established pop artists of today.
“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. […] We actually ended up adding more. She wanted to add more because she wanted to be more prepared. She was just ecstatic [after the performance]. 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.” Schwandt adds.
The choreographer is well aware that, “for some reason or another,” the public does not like Heidi, although he says he rarely bothers to read the reports in the media, let alone the negative comments on sites such as YouTube. However, for once, he would like it if detractors stopped hating for no reason and would just appreciate the performance in itself. Then, Schwandt believes, they would see that Montag actually did a good job with the choreography for “Body Language.”
“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.” Schwandt concludes by saying.