But behind the bright lights and pulsing music, some dancers say they were sexually assaulted, harassed and manipulated by the company's powerful founder and famous teachers and choreographers, according to a joint investigation by The Associated Press and the Toronto Star.
Break The Floor now draws around 300,000 dance students, some as young as 5, to packed hotel ballrooms across the U.S. and Canada for weekend workshops and competitions. A Toronto-born teen alleged a famous choreographer propositioned her for sex just hours after judging her at a 2012 Break the Floor convention. An Ottawa dancer working as an assistant for the company said the same choreographer groped him in public.
All of these sources spoke on the condition of anonymity in fear of retaliation and damage to their careers in the tight-knit professional dance community. Stroming declined repeated interview requests. But during a 2020 in-house training, a recording of which was reviewed by the AP and Star, Stroming addressed his own past misconduct.
One dance instructor said she warns the children and teens she brings to conventions today to be watchful and aware of the potential for abuse of power. About two decades ago, when she was a dance teacher accompanying her students to a Break the Floor event, she said she refused Stroming's $500 offer to join him in his hotel room.Break The Floor hosts conventions in cities across North America, putting on events in hotel ballrooms every weekend over the course of a six-month season.
“He called me his convention boyfriend,” recalled Hudson. “I didn't know how inappropriate that was.”Hudson said he was optimistic. This might just be his lucky break into professional dance. After all, Meismer was already an icon; he had toured with Britney Spears, Madonna and Paula Abdul. The next day Meismer was removed from NUVO's website and abruptly left the tour. He is no longer with the company, according to Break The Floor. Meismer didn't respond to repeated requests for comment. His representatives at the MSA Agency also said they had no comment on his behalf.
That's what Gary Schaufeld says happened to him. He was a teen in 2004, assisting a successful tap dancer named Danny Wallace, who wasn't with Break the Floor at the time, but would go on to run one of its subsidiary conventions. Schaufeld had fallen in love with tap at 7 years old, and assisting Wallace offered a chance to raise his profile and learn from one of the best.
In an interview earlier this year with the AP and the Star, Wallace denied Schaufeld's allegations and said nothing sexual or physical ever transpired between them. He referred reporters to his lawyer, who didn't respond.“It was my church,” he said, but now “the whole dance scene feels dirty and tainted.”By the mid-2000s, dance exploded into the mainstream with the debuts of popular television shows like So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With The Stars.
The Star's prior investigation uncovered allegations that Lazzarini had subjected at least six dancers to unwanted sexual advances at Break The Floor events. Three of these dancers were under 18. One said Lazzarini groped him through a hole in his pants. Another said Lazzarini texted her a nude selfie when she was 16. A third said he and Lazzarini exchanged nude photos when he was 17.
If you work in that industry that’s frankly a risk you have to take. The real world doesn’t care about this. They signed up for a decadent livelihood