It was more than just 13 minutes of dance choreography. “The Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show Starring Bad Bunny” was a statement of inclusion over division, a vibrant Spanish-language celebration of culture guaranteed to offend those whose idea of “American” entertainment was a little whiter, a little more sedate and a little less melting pot-y.
“I think when you are truly yourself, that is a statement,” said Charm La’Donna, a Compton-born dancer and choreographer who took the lead on the halftime show alongside longtime Bad Bunny associate Karina Ortiz. “It was all of us bringing our different backgrounds into a space where people could enjoy and have love. I wasn’t thinking beyond ‘Let’s have fun, let’s enjoy, let’s dance.’ The statement of love is powerful, and that was absolutely the purpose.”
“At the end of the day, I feel like the mix of everybody made the performance as beautiful as it was,” Ortiz added. “I’m from Puerto Rico, and sometimes I think the industry and social media is intimidating and it separates everybody. But this actually felt like a community.”
Creating that community, though, wasn’t easy. La’Donna hadn’t worked with Bad Bunny before but had received Emmy nominations for the Kendrick Lamar Super Bowl halftime show and the “Beyoncé Bowl”; Ortiz had never done a Super Bowl before but had years of experience with Bad Bunny, whose live shows inspired many of the elements of the performance. “All of the stages had a meaning,” Ortiz said. “We wanted people to feel represented, to feel, ‘Oh, I know this, I lived this.’”
It all took place on a stage at Levi’s Stadium in Northern California, but also on the field surrounding the stage. “We had the casita, the cornfields, the wedding, the bodega,” La’Donna said of the scenery that created an entire village. “There were so many elements that needed to blend together for the live space and for the camera.”
Specific dances were chosen based on the songs; salsa got one form of dance, reggaeton another. “The dance is part of our community and our language, music-wise,” Ortiz said. “Bad Bunny wanted to mix all the Latin communities and celebrate all the styles.”
The Emmy nomination came for three specific parts of the performance: a medley of songs set around the casita; “EoO,” a driving song in the sandungueo style of reggaeton; and “NUEVAYoL,” a dembow number about the struggle for Puerto Rican identity. But for La’Donna and Ortiz, the toughest part wasn’t overseeing the individual segments but rather getting everything to fit together into a seamless whole that covered 13 different songs in as many minutes, while the dancers moved through fields of corn that were actually people dressed in cornstalk costumes.
“There were so many factors,” La’Donna said. “There were 300 dancers: dancers in this section, dancers in that section. This dancer has a quick change; that dancer can’t have a quick change. This person has to run this way, but the camera is going that way. The grass people need to move to the left…
“It was important for us to make sure that everyone in the stadium felt what the people at home felt. So things were choreographed for camera and also choreographed for the space. Every movement mattered, even if the camera didn’t see it.”
This story first appeared in the Down to the Wire: Comedy issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
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