The Nets Advantage
The Brooklynettes dance team has pioneered a diversity of techniques and outreach efforts that blends Brooklyn Nets and NBA brand ambassador and performance artist
By Matt Scanlon
Industry Magazine
In what is generally considered to be cheerleading’s founding days, Princeton University recruited students and players in 1877 to shout synchronized cheers at both baseball and football games, and adolescent males (of all ages) will be at once fascinated (and possibly depressed) to note that cheerleading was generally an all-male activity, from then until the early years of the 20th century. During World War II, however, men were simply not available to act as sideline boosters (or players, in most instances), so cheering quickly became almost universally female dominated—both at the high school and college levels—and today, approximately 97% of all cheerleading participants are female.
The true marketing genius behind evolving this tradition beyond occasional if enthusiastic athleticism into true choreographed performance came at the hand of Dallas Cowboys manager Tex Schramm, who realized in 1969 that he should form a squad dressed in provocative fashion, a plan that both wildly multiplied Cowboys ticket sales and generated an institution of fascination and sex appeal that continues unbroken to this day.
One thing that’s critical to note when assessing the Brooklynettes, the Brooklyn Nets dance team as an organization, however, is that they ain’t cheerleaders.
“This is a team,” explained Kimberlee Garris, Director of Entertainment Marketing for the Nets. “Actually, more than that… it’s a sisterhood.”
A creative and novel rebranding of the New Jersey Nets dance team, the Brookylnettes are now in the pre-playoff mode of their second season. Part Nets ambassadors, entertainers, seasoned dance professionals, and NBA ambassadors, the team of 20 represents a complex of fitness, flexibility, and capability that would put the amiably bouncing Dallas boosters of the ’70s into a state of stupefied awe. With just over a single minute to essentially perform a choreographed theater in the round—and just a few times each game—ample responsibility rests on the team to do remarkable things in a tiny economy of time. To that end, prop changes are flurrying and de rigueur, and costume changes a blur of diversity (including everything from an alluring variation on black tie to tear-away pants), requiring pre-team knowledge that, Garris pointed out, regularly shocks the uninitiated in its complexity.
“It’s generally recommended that those interested in joining have at least eight years of dance instruction or experience,” said Garris, who joined the front office of the New Jersey Nets in 2005, not long after taking home a cognitive neuroscience degree from Harvard. “Other than that, as long as you’re 18 and keen to be a performer in a very challenging environment, you’re welcome to audition.”
“It’s very clear within the first 30 seconds of that audition if there is technical training going on,” Garris added. “We will be examining whether they can do a double pirouette, for example…some kind of leg kick, turning jump, or Calypso, plus other leaps and turns. Are they pointing their toe? Is their leg in the right place? Are they staying on top of their pirouette leg? Then there’s the question of whether they are giving you something that you think will read in an arena of nearly 18,000 fans.”
Not surprisingly then, the 400 applicants who turned out for last June’s audition were, within the four rounds of cuts, carefully winnowed to a precious 30 or 40. That intimidating competitor-to-final-member ratio applies to the existing team as well, all of whom are required to re-audition at the end of each season.
Dancers are directed principally by choreographer Adar Wellington (who has danced in videos for Kanye West’s “Lost In The World” and Usher’s “Scream,” among many others), though the team often brings in guest choreographers to supply fresh moves. Garris pointed out that this performance diversity has its corollary in the overall mission of the team, which she described as needing to achieve nothing less than being, “ambassadors of Brooklyn, the Nets, and the NBA simultaneously.”
In addition to the 41 regular-season home games here at Barclays Center, select members of the team are recruited to travel around the world for NBA grassroots events. Typically, six dancers at a minimum are required to achieve a performance quorum in such venues, and within the Brooklyn team’s short year-and-a-half of action, members have traveled to such ports of call as São Paulo, Singapore, Naples, Madrid, and Milan. A regularly occurring performance at these events is the team’s signature “Dunking Divas,” in which non-acrophobic members leap far above the 10-foot-high basketball rim—using a trampoline as propulsion—then slam varying styles of dunks.
“And that’s just one performance that sets us apart from most of the other teams out there,” added Garris.
Megan Roup, a wide-smiling two-season Brookynettes vet and native of Santa Barbara California (middle, right), who has been a New Yorker for eight years, explained that the fitness required for such a job is unrelenting, but all part of a day’s work for dance professionals.
“I do this, of course, but I’m also a fitness model at Wilhelmina in the city, as well as work at the Tracy Anderson Method in Tribeca,” Roup said, adding that the novel dance-based fitness method school (of which Gwyneth Paltrow is a co-owner) has captivated city residents growing bored of the same old grind.
“Dance cardio and muscular structure work is how I would describe the method most accurately,” she said. “It’s choreographed and rigorous, but great fun.”
Expecting some breakthrough dietary techniques from the Tisch School of the Arts graduate, we were instead supplied with a useful and intimidating excuse to screw up…ever so slightly.
“I try to keep an 80%/20% ratio in mind when maintaining an exercise routine and diet. Four-fifths of the time, I really try to eat right, and what revolutionized that process for me was eliminating gluten, sugar, and dairy,” she explained. “But it’s critical to give yourself time off—at least one day a week that even professional athletes need to rest and recover, and that one day off program just works well for me.”
Liz Chestang (facing page, middle, left), a newcomer to the team and BFA graduate in dance performance and choreography from Ohio University in Athens, had in mind a career in the company of a classical dance organization, but quickly found herself fascinated by modern dance, including hip-hop, and made a beeline for New York just two weeks after graduation. She, like most members of the team, maintains another career.
“I’m also a fitness instructor,” Chestang explained from under a wild expanse of auburn curls, “…at a studio called Body by Simone [in Chelsea], which emphasizes a fusion of dance-cardio, and a variety of toning methods, with some elements of Pilates thrown in there as well.” She, too, emphasized eating what performers often term a “clean” diet, in her case an almost unstoppable supply of fruits and vegetables, whole grains, yogurt, proteins such as egg whites and chicken, “…and tons and tons of water.”
“But then, you also live in New York…in Brooklyn. It would be simply ridiculous not to enjoy a slice of pizza once in a while,” she added with a grin.
Garris pointed out that such articulate and outgoing representatives of the team are part of what is searched for in the interview process, and those particularly adept at being motivating spokeswomen are recruited into the Brooklynettes All-Star contingent.
“People who have this intelligence and caliber do us a world of good, of course,” she explained. “And there are instances in which—as a result—they are recruited to do other jobs, or might matriculate into other full-time gigs. We just had a dancer who was asked to join the company of The Lion King, for example. This is a remarkable opportunity, both for us and them, and that mutually beneficial dynamic is just part of what makes the organization work.”
