Taylor Swift’s Choreographer Says Star Got ‘Bad Rap’ for Dancing and Was ‘in Her Head’ Pre-Eras Tour: ‘We Fine-Tuned That’

Choreographer Mandy Moore is opening up about how she helped Taylor Swift shake it off and embrace dancing on the Eras Tour.

Moore — who also recently choreographed the star’s music video for “The Fate of Ophelia” — talked to The New York Times about working with Swift, 35, to build her confidence when it came to dancing.

“She’d gotten a bad rap for a long time about her dancing, so she was really in her head,” Moore said. “We shifted the focus to how movement was already manifesting in her body — the way she naturally wanted to move. And then we fine-tuned that: ‘OK, that looks a little weird with your shoulders,’ or, ‘Let’s straighten your knee here.’”

Moore, 49, added that she admires the “Opalite” singer’s “tenacity” when it comes to work ethic, and her vision when it comes to executing ideas.

“She works so hard. Whatever I was putting down, she was picking up. And she’s very clear about what she wants, which I love,” Moore said. “I find I can’t create unless I have some parameters. The ‘do whatever you want’ thing, for me, it just feels like chaos.”

Swift previously told Time in 2023 that Moore was recommended to her by Emma Stone, with whom she worked on the movie La La Land.

The star told the outlet she had three months of dance training prior to the Eras Tour, as she wanted to be “so over-rehearsed that I could be silly with the fans, and not lose my train of thought.”

“Learning choreography is not my strong suit,” she added.

In an undated video shared to social media, Swift responded to criticism of her love of dancing during awards shows like the Grammys, and likened her moves to that of a “baby giraffe learning how to walk.”

“All over the internet it was like, ‘Taylor Swift looks awkward when she dances, she’s so bad at dancing,’” the star recalled. “So the way I handle that now, that criticism, is I wrote a song called ‘Shake It Off,’ and as soon as I wrote the song I knew exactly what I wanted to do for the music video. I knew that I wanted to do an entire music video of me awkwardly, badly dancing.”

Swift added that she had learned to “laugh at certain things and not take everything so seriously,” though she noted that if “something hurts your feelings, that’s valid.”

“Yeah, I do dance awkwardly. And I’m having more fun than you,” she said.

Earlier this month, Swift announced that she’ll release a six-part docuseries on Disney+ in December called The End of an Era, which will cover the “development, impact and inner-workings that created the phenomenon that was The Eras Tour.”

She will also premiere Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour: The Final Show on Dec. 12, a live recording of her final performance of The Eras Tour in Vancouver, shot on Dec. 8, 2024.