About nine minutes into Usher’s mesmerizing halftime performance at the Super Bowl Sunday night, a slew of roller skaters catapulted on stage, spinning, sliding and flipping their way into formation around singer-songwriter H.E.R. As it turns out, the choreographer behind that part of the show is 38-year-old Sean-Christopher Freeman, a Little Rock native who got his start dancing at Parkview High School.
View this post on Instagram
“My entire life growing up, I was going to be a doctor,” Freeman said Tuesday in an interview with the Arkansas Times. “I used to record music videos on VHS from TRL and Video Soul and I would teach myself the dances in my bedroom, but no one actually knew — I don’t even think I really knew I could dance. It was just something I did. Parkview was the first time I actually saw people dancing in a class setting.”
There, he learned from legendary dance instructor C. Michael Tidwell, who also taught Mayor Frank Scott Jr. around the same time. Tidwell, a classically trained ballet dancer who taught a generation of Black boys at Parkview and other schools in Little Rock, was the subject of a 2019 Arkansas Times profile by writer Frederick McKindra.
Soon after, Freeman joined Tidwell’s Centre for the Dansarts. He also took classes from another Little Rocker, Latisha Welch, who introduced him to formal hip hop dancing and the art of choreography. By the time he finished high school, Freeman knew he wanted to dance professionally.
After cutting his teeth on “Dancing with the Stars” and “So You Think You Can Dance,” graduating from Oglethorpe University, and two years of working at Dance Dynamics in Little Rock, Freeman settled in Atlanta, where he opened his own dance studio and began teaching at Booker T. Washington High School. His life as a teacher quietly chugged along up until the pandemic, when he released a music video for a song he’d written, “Girls,” that intuitively combined roller skating and dancing.
“When Covid happened, we were all just stuck in our houses and roller skating picked up this popularity because it was something people could do outside,” Freeman said. “I’ve always skated my entire life. I grew up skating at Little Rock Skating Arena, which is now known as Arkansas Skatium. One day, I got a phone call from someone who said they were a producer from ‘Good Morning America,’ and I honestly thought it was a joke, so I hung up the phone.”
Fortunately, they called back, which led to Freeman performing on the show for a segment about the rebirth of roller skating.
“It completely opened up a whole other side of my career,” he said.
After his appearance on “Good Morning America,” Freeman found himself choreographing a music video for Puerto Rican superstar Rauw Alejandro, performing at the Latin Billboard Music Awards, directing a roller skating sequence in the Starz drama “P-Valley,” and eventually working with Usher as the skate captain and choreographer for his Las Vegas residency.
“When I did the residency, I was still teaching at the same time,” he said. “I would basically take six flights back and forth each week. I did that for a year. It was a lot. But it was living out a dream of that 15-year-old boy who first started dancing. At Parkview, all I wanted to do was see myself under the lights and on stage.”
View this post on Instagram
It wasn’t until the third week of January that Freeman found out he’d be helping out with choreography for Usher’s halftime show at this year’s Super Bowl, which was already in rehearsals.
“I did my part and then I had to come back to work,” he said. “At my high school, I have the dance department, but I also have a competitive dance team. They were actually in the middle of their season, competing every weekend, preparing for the state championship, which was on the Saturday before the Super Bowl. I literally went to the state championship Saturday morning and once we got through awards and got our trophies, I drove an hour and a half straight to the airport and flew straight to Vegas.”
Nerve wracking? Not so much. The high standards set by Usher have gotten Freeman comfortable with persisting under pressure.
“I think I’m so used to it at this point that it’s not that stressful for me,” he said. “The one thing I appreciate about Usher is that he really pushes you to be creative. When I first worked with him on the residency, I choreographed a song called ‘Superstar.’ I literally choreographed that song seven different times, completely different choreography. For some people, that’s insane, but for me, I love the challenge. It forces you to be great and that’s what you see in his work and performance. He’s a living testament to hard work and it paying off to not just do the first thing.”
Incredibly, Freeman plans to keep juggling his teaching and extracurricular work, unless a “huge opportunity” forces him to step out of the classroom. One day, he hopes to start his own performing arts high school.
