Watch Tanisha Scott Find Her Caribbean Beat in Brooklyn
To call Tanisha Scott simply a choreographer would be missing out on her impressive list of bona fides: movement coach, creative director, music video dancer, and Drake whisperer. Yes, the Toronto-born dancer is the one to thank for Drake’s meme-y moves in his “Hotline Bling” video. “I didn’t know it would become viral but he did,” she says, from the set of her Vogue shoot featuring Bandier’s new collaboration with FILA. “We’d look at the monitors, and he’d say, ‘Oh yeah, people are going to get me for that, and I love it.’ He’s always 10 steps ahead.”
But more than anything else on her long résumé, Scott is a storyteller. “I’m always telling stories through movement,” she says. “I tune into what an artist is trying to say within the lyrics, and if the dance is not about the lyrics, then it’s about the music itself, the melody.” That need to weave a tale is how she’s always approached her art, even back when she transitioned from being a track star (she was a sprinter) to scoring her first big professional dance gig as a backup dancer on tour with Mýa. Since then, her star has only risen. She’s translated song into movement for Sean Paul in his now-iconic 2002 “Gimme the Light” video, for Beyonce in her “Baby Boy” video—and also on Rihanna’s Loud Tour, at the VMAs with Alicia Keys, and, currently, as Cardi B’s creative director.
Scott—friends call her T—describes her dance style as “grassroots,” because she was never formally trained, something she sees as a positive for her day job. “I don’t come into a room and go, ‘Here are the moves, let’s do them,’” she says. “That’s not fair. What if someone is better with their arm movement, and I do something that is dope with their feet?” Instead, she takes her time to get to know an artist, dancer, or song, always taking her surroundings into account. So for her Steven Brahms–directed Vogue shoot on the streets of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Scott—exclusively wearing the new Bandier x FILA collaboration line—used each location as inspiration for her five moves: the Gully Creeper, a dancehall nod to her Jamaican heritage (her parents are from the island); Whine, another Caribbean classic; Old School, an homage to her favorite ’90s dancers, the Fly Girls; Azonto Remix, her spin on an traditional African step from Ghana; and Lift Your Leg Up, a dance based on a Calypso song called “Zookey.” Together, the moves make up a collection as diverse as Scott’s talents—all uniquely different but all undeniably Scott.
