COLORSxSTUDIOS

In 1999, when Craft got to college, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes put out a call for dancers ahead of TLC’s No Scrubs tour. Craft made the drive from Michigan to Atlanta with a friend for the audition, and studied the group so well in preparation that the trio later joked she could have been a member. When Craft met Devyne Stephens, TLC’s choreographer, she was shocked that the group didn’t make up their own moves because of how much Stephens’ mirrored their personalities. While TLC made choreographic contributions to their routines, their steps were enhanced by Stephens’ vision, an approach Craft mirrored when she became a choreographer. Eventually, Stephens asked if Craft wanted to make up a number for the show. ​​Once she stepped into the official role as choreographer, she realized she’d been doing this since creating routines for Trendsetters.

“Being a dancer was something I had to experience before becoming a choreographer,” she says. “As a dancer, you have to know how to maneuver artists and what the audience is looking at. You know what it feels like to have people looking at you like: I don’t know this song. How are you going to make me like it?”

After Craft worked with TLC, more opportunities started rolling in. In 2000, she choreographed Kandi Burress’ “Don’t Think I’m Not.” As it was her first music video, the director brought on two choreographers with more experience to polish up her moves. While some may find this frustrating, Craft viewed it as a valuable learning opportunity. “That [experience] taught me that things don’t always have to be exactly how you want them,” she says. “Sometimes it’s okay to merge two people’s ideas to come up with a really great product.” Even at this early stage, collaboration was at the heart of Craft’s practice.

Dance didn’t come naturally to all of Craft’s clients. At the start, artists like Amerie and Justin Bieber were intimidated by the work Craft had done with Ciara and Usher. Yet the choreographer assured them that the key to making any routine believable was for it to be an extension of themselves. “This point isn’t for you to dance like her, it’s for us to dance like you,” she’d tell Amerie. When the R&B singer showed Craft her signature hair swings, Craft worked it into the choreography for Amerie’s 2005 single “1 Thing,” a percussive, go-go inspired track. And despite Bieber’s “Baby” being a quintessential pop song, Craft recognized that his ambidextrous soccer abilities made him a natural glider. “I applaud choreographers who can come in with routines pre-planned,” she says, “but I have to stand in the middle of the floor and say: put your record on, let’s have some fun.”

The entertainment industry, and how audiences engage with artists, has changed quite a bit since Craft started working in the late 90s. Dance used to be an unspoken requirement for most artists, now only a handful of newer R&B acts—such as Normani, Chlöe Bailey, and Teyana Taylor—follow a similar path as their predecessors. “Working with newer artists, I’ve found that they have a bit of anxiety about working on the stage,” she says. “Even Whitney Houston could sing and blend in with her dancers in the background. I don’t think everyone has to dance, but you should know how to perform. I miss seeing the drive to perform.”

Recently, Craft’s love for Black TV has come full circle. She’s now the choreographer for P-Valley, a STARZ series about a Mississippi strip club that uses exotic dancing as a Trojan horse to talk about the intersections of race, gender, and class. Craft’s routines for the show consist of a series of cuts from three dancers: an actress, a club dancer, and a pole dancer. Her task, like most of her career, has been to fuse those worlds together: the drama of the actress, fearlessness of the club dancer, and precision of the pole dancer.

For Craft, P-Valley recenters the dancer as the arbiter of cool. “It’s like what we’re seeing with TikTok,” she says. “The dancer is back to telling you: this is hot, or this is not hot. Outside of the show, if I’m working on a new song, I might call a dancer and ask them what they think about it. They are amazing A&Rs, and at the same time, amazing dancers and athletes.”

Still, Craft has a love-hate relationship with TikTok. “As an elder, I’m trying to work through [TikTok],” she says. “When you watch the NFL or the NBA, you let them be extraordinary. But when it comes to artistry and dancing, you don’t allow us to be extraordinary? Dance shouldn’t be something millions of people can do. It should be something millions of people want to watch you do.”