Every year, one of the world’s most prestigious dance competition businesses offers the promise of Hollywood glory to hundreds of thousands of eager young dancers seeking to make it big on TV, in movies, and on stage.
According to a joint investigation by The Associated Press and the Toronto Star, numerous dancers claim they were sexually abused, harassed, and exploited by the company’s strong founder and famed instructors and choreographers behind the bright lights and throbbing music.
According to interviews with hundreds of former and present employees and students, the issues extend back to the establishment of Los Angeles-based Break The Floor Productions; as the firm grew into an industry behemoth, its management nurtured a culture of sex and silence.
Break the Floor’s influence spans the entertainment sector, including some of the most well-known figures in music, television, and social media. At the Oscars and the Super Bowl, alumni and instructors have performed on stage alongside Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift. “Dancing with the Stars,” “Dance Moms,” and “So You Think You Can Dance” have all included company teachers. Break the Floor engaged social media celebrity Charli D’Amelio, whose TikTok account has over 10.5 billion likes, to create educational videos when COVID-19 lockdowns halted in-person sessions.
Gil Stroming, a dynamic dancer who rose to prominence in the 1990s as part of the off-Broadway performance “Tap Dogs,” which The New York Times called as a “beefcake tap-a-thon,” founded the company 22 years ago.
Break The Floor today attracts about 300,000 dance students from all over the world, some as young as 5, to crowded hotel ballrooms for weekend seminars and contests around the United States and Canada.
Stroming said in January that he had sold Break the Floor and stood down as CEO, while the AP and the Star were investigating claims of sexual misconduct against him and others connected with the firm.
The charges, according to the new owner, Russell Geyser, have nothing to do with the present firm, and those accused of misbehavior no longer work for Break The Floor. He stated four individuals were “let go” in his first ten days as CEO.
The dancing organization was initially plagued by charges of sexual misconduct in October, when the Toronto Star published allegations of rampant sexual harassment and predatory behavior among Break the Floor teachers.
A youngster from Toronto claims a prominent choreographer approached her for sex only hours after evaluating her at the Break the Floor event in 2012. The same choreographer grabbed him in public, according to an Ottawa dancer who works as an assistant for the company.
An continuing investigation by the Star in collaboration with the Associated Press has now discovered allegations of sexual misconduct dating back to the dance company’s early years and including Stroming.
According to more than a dozen former employees and students, Stroming was engaged in a series of improper interactions with pupils of the dance department he was leading.
Four of these accounts claim he took young Break the Floor contestants to parties or work gatherings and presented them as his girlfriend. According to seven sources, Stroming interacted with students in an intimate and improper manner. Stroming allegedly handed a staff member a nude picture of one of the pupils, according to one staff member.
All of these sources spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal and harm to their professional dancing careers.
One dancer recalled meeting Stroming when she was a 16-year-old high school student with her parents at one of Break the Floor’s inaugural events. Stroming was three years her senior, a charismatic 19-year-old in charge of the whole performance, she said. She and Stroming had oral sex at her first work function when she was 17, she added.
Stroming flew the dancer to New York a year or two later, right after her 18th birthday, and informed her he had set up potentially career-launching dance tryouts, she claims. They had intercourse in his place that night. Stroming unexpectedly departed for Las Vegas the following morning, handing her $40 for a taxi trip back to the airport. She claims she didn’t go to any auditions and was disappointed when she got home.
The AP and the Star talked with the dancer’s father, who stated that she informed him about her sexual encounters with Stroming in the years thereafter, which disturbed her severely.
Stroming turned down many interview requests. Stroming, on the other hand, acknowledged his own prior misbehavior at a 2020 in-house training, a videotape of which was examined by the AP and Star.
“I was absolutely improper in a number of ways,” he said to his coworkers. “I was in improper relationships with professors as a student, and vice versa, and looking back, I was like, oh yeah, I believe a lot of us don’t know the power we have in the dance industry at first.”
“I have been quite honest that when I originally began the firm at 19, over 20 years ago, there were concerns of inappropriateness,” he told the AP and Star in a written statement. He didn’t react to the charges in detail.
While not all of the complainants in this article were employees of Break the Floor at the time of the alleged occurrences, the instructors and executives accused of misconduct have played critical roles in the company’s growth and popularity.
One dancing teacher said she cautions the youngsters and teenagers she takes to conventions now to be wary of the possibility for power abuse. She claimed she turned down Stroming’s $500 invitation to join him in his hotel room while she was a dance instructor bringing her pupils to a Break the Floor event around two decades ago.
‘CONVENTION BOYFRIEND’ HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT
Over the course of a six-month season, Break The Floor holds conferences in locations throughout North America, putting on events in hotel ballrooms every weekend. Hundreds of studios and schools from smaller towns send teams of dancers to the competitions, which are dubbed JUMP, NUVO, 24seven, RADIX, and DancerPalooza by Stroming. The ultimate aim is to take first place in the annual Dance Awards under the limelight.
Break The Floor conferences, which cost between $200 and $350 per student, provide hundreds of courses beneath strobing lights and pounding music, in addition to contests with cash awards. They usually finish with parents standing on the sidelines photographing their joyful children in leotards and cosmetics striking poses with renowned choreographers and dancers.
On the convention circuit, Jeremy Hudson, now a professional dancer, grew up and earned Outstanding Dancer of the Year at the first JUMP Nationals in 2004. Although Break the Floor helped establish his career, he is still haunted by an alleged attack by one of the show’s lead dancers.
Hudson, who was 16 at the time, looked forward to the weekend get-togethers. However, he was uneasy when a dancing instructor in his early 30s, Mark Meismer, kept telling him how gorgeous he was. Despite this, he accepted a sought-after chance to help Meismer as the two of them visited several studios and conferences. Hudson continued with Meismer a year later when he became one of the first teachers for Break The Floor’s inaugural NUVO conference.
Hudson said, “He dubbed me his convention boyfriend.” “I had no idea how offensive that was.”
Meismer invited the 17-year-old dancer to his house.
Hudson expressed his optimism. This may be his fortunate break into the world of professional dancing. Meismer, after all, was already a celebrity, having toured with Britney Spears, Madonna, and Paula Abdul.
They didn’t talk about work at Meismer’s residence, however. Hudson claims Meismer forced him against a wall and sexually assaulted him orally. He recalls Meismer shushing him and alerting him that someone was sleeping in an adjacent room.
Hudson said that Meismer pursued him for sex in the years after that. Hudson claims that Meismer would lead him into toilet stalls for oral sex at dancing studios. Hudson claims that Meismer would grope him in his seat on aircraft. Hudson claimed Meismer would purchase them identical clothing as a surprise.
Hudson said, “I simply didn’t know myself well enough to realize how dangerous that was.”
Hudson is now a well-known dancer, with performances in over a dozen films, including “La La Land” and “FAME,” as well as huge tours with Pink, Lady Gaga, and Kylie Minogue. He kept what occurred with Meismer to himself for 17 years. In February, after speaking with the AP and the Star, Hudson went public with his story, sharing it in an emotional Instagram video without mentioning Meismer.
“I accepted this choreographer’s word for it, thinking he was assisting me in establishing a dance career.” “Which he wasn’t,” Hudson stated in his video, which has received over 6,300 views.
Meismer was deleted from NUVO’s website the following day and suddenly departed the tour. According to Break The Floor, he is no longer employed by the organization. Meismer has remained silent despite numerous demands for comment. His MSA Agency reps likewise declined to respond on his behalf.
Dance is one of the remaining places where adults have unsupervised access to younger pupils, according to Marci A. Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania professor who created CHILD USA and is the author of “Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect its Children.”
“Dance groups provide a plethora of opportunity for adults to select out a youngster, groom them, and then isolate them to sexually abuse them,” she said. “It’s not that the dancing world is any different from any other world; it’s simply that they’ve been able to retain their secrets for a longer time.”
Many youth-focused groups, according to Hamilton, utilize hotel rooms – away from home — to exploit the power imbalance between instructors and children.
Gary Schaufeld claims that’s what happened to him. In 2004, he was an adolescent helping Danny Wallace, a successful tap dancer who wasn’t with Break the Floor at the time but would later lead one of its subsidiary conventions. Schaufeld had been enamored with tap since he was seven years old, and helping Wallace provided an opportunity to boost his profile while learning from one of the finest.
Wallace allegedly slammed Schaufeld against the wall of a hotel room they occupied with a female employee one night and forced oral sex on him, according to Schaufeld.
“I felt paralyzed in my own flesh, unsure of what to do,” Schaufeld said.
After that, Schaufeld said Wallace advised him not to say anything since it would be detrimental to both of their jobs. As a result, Schaufeld remained silent. The secret, on the other hand, ate away to him. His mental state began to worsen. He stopped eating and sleeping, and he stated he had panic episodes. He chose to notify his family and face Wallace 14 years later, in 2018.
Schaufeld put out his charges in a series of text exchanges between him and Wallace, which the AP and the Star saw, and Wallace stated he “couldn’t be more regretful” despite not remembering anything.
Wallace stated, “I’m not a monster, but I feel like one,” and that he had “a lot of blurry recollections and a vast list of regrets/mistakes” from that time period.
Wallace rejected Schaufeld’s charges and claimed nothing sexual or physical ever happened between them in an interview with the AP and the Star earlier this year, but he did recall feeling a “inappropriate attraction” to him. Reporters were directed to his lawyer, who did not answer.
Schaufeld hasn’t danced in years and has no intention of doing it again.
He remarked, “It was my church,” but now “the whole dancing scene seems nasty and polluted.”
THE RULES OF CONDUCT
With the premieres of famous television series like So You Think You Can Dancing and Dancing With The Stars in the mid-2000s, dance surged into the mainstream.
According to market data from researchers at IbisWorld, Gil Stroming’s firm benefited from all of that studio expansion, with the sector valued at almost $4 billion by 2021 and employing more than 120,000 people. He expanded into Mexico, Costa Rica, and Canada, adding more conventions and sites.
Dancers Nick Lazzarini, Travis Wall, and Misha Gabriel became huge name attractions as Break The Floor teachers thanks to the televised dance performances. They’ve all subsequently departed the firm after being accused of sexual misconduct.
At the height of his reputation, Stroming recruited Lazzarini to join the convention circuit, where he taught hundreds of thousands of eager young dancers. As previously reported by the Star, Stroming discreetly dismissed him in 2019 when he uploaded, then soon withdrew, a video of himself masturbating on Instagram.
At least six dancers were allegedly exposed to inappropriate sexual approaches by Lazzarini at Break The Floor events, according to a previous investigation by The Star. Three of the dancers were under the age of eighteen. Lazzarini allegedly touched him through a hole in his trousers, according to one witness. Another said that when she was 16, Lazzarini emailed her a naked selfie. A third said that when he was 17, he and Lazzarini exchanged naked images.
Gabriel, another well-known dancer and choreographer, is accused of sending a nude picture to a 16-year-old dancer on Snapchat, who claims she was so shocked she hurled her phone across the room. Gabriel was recently expelled from the JUMP faculty after performing alongside Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, Beyoncé, and others. Though there was no public notification of his leaving, his photo and profile were removed from the website.
Lilli Maples had been taking Gabriel’s courses since she was ten years old. Gabriel, 29, had invited her to his hotel room in a text message with a shirtless picture after she turned 18, she alleged. Gabriel wrote Maples a message threatening to destroy her career after she showed the images to friends who published them on social media, she claimed.
When confronted about Maples’ allegations, Gabriel said in a written statement that he had been drinking hard that night to cope with his family’s major health difficulties. He claims to have passed out and has no memory of sending the SMS. He apologized and stated he was a child victim of abuse and that his messages to Maples were a “once in a lifetime quick conversation.”
These texts were not viewed by the AP or the Star because Maples claimed they had been erased. Maples’ mother, on the other hand, informed the news organizations that she saw the photographs when they surfaced on their family’s home computer in shared photo albums.
“My heart stopped beating,” she said.
Gabriel denied sending the picture to the then-16-year-old, stating he would never participate in “inappropriate activity that would ever lead to sending anything like this” to a youngster.
According to child activists and industry officials, sexual abuse is rampant in the dancing profession.
According to Jamal Story, a professional dancer and co-chair of The Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists’ National Dance Committee, the combination of hyper-sexual dance content and close contact between adult teachers and young dancers creates an environment ripe for abuse (SAG-AFTRA).
“Sexual predation affects professional dancers in a variety of ways, ranging from annoying flirting to full-fledged deadly assaults. And what’s really heinous about it happening at conventions is that it occurs to children. “Nowhere in the realm of education can pupils feel as though they are prey,” he remarked.
Former Break The Floor teachers have been accused of assaulting young dancers in a variety of situations. Eric Saradpon, a former DancerPalooza teacher, has been charged with indecent actions on juveniles at a private dance class by the Riverside County District Attorney and is awaiting trial. In addition, five dancers have filed a lawsuit against former Boston Ballet star Dusty Button and her husband, claiming sexual assault and abuse. Button was a guest lecturer at Radix conferences. Saradpon’s and the Buttons’ lawyers did not reply to calls for comment.
At least four persons who were fired from Break The Floor for suspected misbehavior have gone on to work with children in other places.
Break The Floor announced a revised code of conduct earlier this year, after Geyser’s appointment as CEO. It prohibited teachers from inviting students to hotel rooms and said that instructors should not refer to students as “daughter” or “son.” It also promotes online prudence when it comes to “Religion, Social Justice, Discrimination, Politics, Love and Romance, Abuse, Mental Health, Bullying, and Terrorism.”
In addition, the new code of conduct states that instructors are required to report suspected child abuse: “It is your responsibility to report anything alarming to the right authorities if you see anything troubling.”