Harry Styles and dancers surprised by turntable spinning the wrong way during Grammys performance

By Marianne Garvey, CNN

If Harry Styles and his backup dancers looked a little out of it during their performance at Sunday’s Grammys, there’s good reason.

The shiny red turntable the group danced on (similar to the one in Styles’ “As It Was” music video) spun in the wrong direction after 10-days of rehearsals, according to some of the performers.

Styles, who won album of the year for “Harry’s House,” and his dancers appeared a bit confused and almost zombie-like as they started their routine.

One dancer, who goes by Dexdexrevolution, posted rehearsal details and backstage videos, only to return after the show with an update on what happened.

“I just wanted to share a story about our performance with Harry Styles at the Grammys yesterday,” Dexter said, explaining that designers made “this beautiful piece on this moving turntable” that held 12 people.

“We rehearsed for ten days … getting down these beautiful formations,” the dancer added, calling the moves “morphing” “rolling” and “artistic” — all practiced moving counterclockwise.

At dress rehearsal, it was “spotless, beautiful,” Dexter said, explaining that making the patterns while on a moving stage and having “all this spacial awareness is a wild challenge.”

But the night of the show, “we get on stage for the performance, the performance starts and the turn table starts going the wrong way.”

While the group tried to get the turntable technician’s attention as Styles sang, they had no luck.

“To switch all these patterns around on the spot having not even walked in that direction,” was difficult Dexter said, adding that the dancers were being pulled in different directions.

“Harry did his best and tried to walk in reverse and reverse in his entire duet,” Dexter added.

While some critics called the performance “lethargic” or “boring,” the dancer said “we were tying to stay standing.”

Brandon Mathis, another dancer who performed on Sunday with Styles, said in an Instagram story that set mix up confused the dancers.

“What you don’t know is that the moment the curtain opened and it was time to perform, our turntable started spinning in reverse,” Mathis said in an Instagram story. “Backwards. Freaking all of us out on live television, and there was nothing we could do to stop it. In real time, we had to troubleshoot and try to do a complete piece in reverse. Talk about professionalism.”

Mathis captioned the post, “things they don’t teach you- how to forsee the unseen and still turn it out.”

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