Justin Bieber has loved performing since he started gaining popularity and stage presence back in 2007. But can the star dance?
Justin Bieber can dance. Though dancing is not the main event of Bieber’s performances, he has worked with some of the best choreographers in the world and loves performing in front of worldwide audiences.
Read more below to find out about Bieber’s dancing, his choreographers, and why one of his tours was canceled midway through.
Bieber’s Dance Moves
Justin Bieber’s songs have long inspired people to dance, shown in tweets by fans like this one, which reads, “they’re playing one time – Justin Bieber rn in the store and it’s taking everything in me not to start singing and dancing around,” or this one which says, “you may not want to admit it but sometimes you just have to go back to 2009 and have a full dance party to baby by justin bieber in your bedroom.”
So Bieber’s music is known for making others want to bust a move, but can he dance himself? His many routines on stage and in music videos throughout his career after working with renowned choreographers prove that he can.
One of his first choreographers was Nick DeMoura, who worked on the Believe Tour which started in 2012 and included 150 shows all over the world in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. DeMoura also worked on Bieber’s music video for the song “Beauty and a Beat,” as well as So You Think You Can Dance, and has won many awards for both his dancing and his choreography.
The choreographer of Bieber’s Purpose World Tour, the worldwide tour for his fourth album released in 2015, was Emma Portner. Portner also both choreographed and starred in the music video of Bieber’s song “Life Is Worth Living.”
Parris Goebel is another, more recent choreographer that Bieber has worked with, as she choreographed his music video for the song “Sorry,” which won Video of the Year at the 2016 American Music Awards, and also choreographed all of the videos for Justin Bieber’s Purpose: The Movement. Goebel has also worked with other world-famous celebrities like Rihanna, Jennifer Lopez, Nicki Minaj, Janet Jackson, BLACKPINK, Shakira, and more.
Check out the YouTube video below to watch Justin Bieber’s best dance breaks over the years, a compilation put together by PopCrush.
Tour Cancellation
It’s well known how much Bieber loves to put on a show for his fans, but some things can make him stop dancing, whether he wants to or not. During Bieber’s worldwide tour of his fourth album, Purpose, Justin became very sick.
In a recent interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Bieber talked about why he canceled the rest of the tour and what it was like for him. “I was really tired emotionally, physically, and I was sick and I didn’t realize I was sick.”
“So I had Epstein-Barr, which is like, it’s called Mono. And then I have Lyme disease. So it was that, it was just the exhaustion of just being on tour, and then it was just everything compounded, I think, to be honest,” he explained.
While fans were disappointed about the cancellation at the time, and that they would miss his beloved dance moves, the much more pressing worry was Bieber’s health. Both he and his wife Hailey made sure that he was at his best before returning to a busy schedule of performing.
When asked about how he deals with Lyme disease, he said, “I think just making sure that I am just doing the right treatments for it, doing the right IVs and all that sort of stuff. Taking the necessary precautions, necessary to not get any worse, I guess. Listen to Hailey when she says she feels that I’m run down… She can let me know when, like, ‘All right, you’re looking depleted right now.’”