The dome has been retrofitted with a sprung floor tonight, folks, because the Dancers draft covers ninety years of musicians whose feet were as famous as their voices — from two brothers doing things on film in 1943 that still look like special effects, all the way to kids doing it in vertical video. Twenty-four chairs. One rule: you had to SING it and MOVE it. Lights down. Here we go.
PICK 1 — MICHAEL JACKSON. Obviously. The moonwalk at Motown 25 is the single most famous five seconds of movement in television history. "Billie Jean" live, "Smooth Criminal" lean, the Thriller short film that made choreography a global event. Now some might say the man at pick two invented everything Michael did — and honestly, they might be right — but hold that thought, because the seeding committee's own note says it best: the student built on the teacher's floor and added a CEILING. First pick. The glove comes off. The dome comes down.
PICK 2 — JAMES BROWN. The teacher. The Godfather. The hardest working feet in show business. The camel walk, the mashed potato, the splits into the spin into the microphone catch — James Brown was doing full cardio WHILE singing the funkiest music ever made, nightly, for decades. Michael studied him the way monks study scripture. The only reason JB is second is the ceiling thing, and his table would like the record to show they consider that ruling TEMPORARY, pending the brackets.
PICK 3 — THE NICHOLAS BROTHERS. The column's proudest seed: Fayard and Harold above every living dancer. Watch the Stormy Weather staircase sequence once — the leapfrog splits DOWN A STAIRCASE, no cuts, no wires, 1943 — and argue after. You won't. Fred Astaire reportedly called it the greatest dance number ever filmed, and Fred Astaire knew some things about dancing. Dual-note: they're the elders of the Time Machine board, first overall by birthright.
PICK 4 — PRINCE. Heels, splits, spins, guitar — SIMULTANEOUSLY. Prince danced like the stage owed him money, in footwear that should have required a stunt double. The Super Bowl in the rain remains the gold standard of doing everything at once and making it look easy.
PICK 5 — JANET JACKSON. Rhythm Nation is the precision-drill masterpiece of the music video era — choreography so tight it looks computer-generated, decades before that was possible. Janet built the blueprint that every pop star of the next two generations trained on. Several of them are seated behind her tonight, taking notes out of habit.
PICK 6 — BEYONCÉ. The modern precision machine. Coachella 2018 was a two-hour homework assignment for every performer alive. The "Single Ladies" routine is so iconic it has its own gravitational field. Sixth is the LOWEST she will ever be seeded in anything.
PICK 7 — USHER. The smoothest technician of his generation, the rightful heir to the Michael-and-Janet school of pop precision. His Time Machine draw is Janet herself — M12, the tightest bout on any card in this tournament, two students of the same school of exactness, and the committee openly predicts a seven-round split decision.
PICK 8 — TINA TURNER. The legs. THE LEGS. Tina in heels doing full-throttle choreography while out-singing a hurricane, for FIVE DECADES. Proud Mary starts nice and easy, and then, as foretold, it gets rough, and no one has ever survived the rough part standing still.
PICKS 9–16, THE DANGEROUS MIDDLE. Jackie Wilson at nine — Mr. Excitement, the man whose stage moves young Elvis studied from the audience. Elvis himself at ten, the hips that broke American television. Chris Brown eleven, pound-for-pound the most gifted pure dancer of the 2000s wave. Bruno Mars twelve — and his Time Machine draw is MICHAEL JACKSON, the tribute-act paradox, a man fighting his own textbook. Ciara thirteen; the 12-versus-13 power bout with Bruno is the tightest technical matchup on the card. Madonna fourteen — reinvention as cardio. Cab Calloway fifteen, zoot suit and all, pulling his second bracket appearance (Frontmen says hello) — the Hi-De-Ho man was moonwalking's great-grandfather before the moonwalk had a name. Bobby Brown sixteen, the King of Stage, inventor of moves that got named after him.
PICKS 17–23. Shakira seventeen — the hips, famously, do not lie, and the polygraph results are in. Britney eighteen, the hardest-working rehearsal-room legend of the TRL era. Normani nineteen, the best pure dancer of her class. MC Hammer twenty — the pants were parachutes because the man was AIRBORNE. Jung Kook twenty-one, carrying the BTS precision flag. Lisa of BLACKPINK twenty-two, K-pop's sharpest solo weapon. Doja Cat twenty-three, the internet's most naturally musical mover.
MR. IRRELEVANT — PICK 24 — TATE McRAE. The dancer-turned-popstar drafted DEAD LAST, and she is doing the angriest pirouette in green-room history. Her opening power-board assignment: Jackie Wilson — a man who was electrifying stages before her grandparents met. Her Time Machine assignment: CAB CALLOWAY, an actual legend of the 1930s. The committee has essentially booked her two field trips to a museum where the exhibits fight back. She has responded by posting a rehearsal video captioned "fine." One word. Chilling.
WHY THE TWO BOARDS DISAGREE. The Time Machine board runs Nicholas-to-Lisa, oldest to youngest, and turns every opening bout into a séance — Elvis vs. Doja Cat is seventy years of hip movement in one ring. The Title Fight board asks one question: who wins TONIGHT? Chronology says the Nicholas Brothers built the staircase everyone else is still climbing; power says the man in the fedora is waiting at the top of it. Both are right. That's the tournament.
Doors Saturday. The floor is sprung, the shoes are checked, and the fire marshal has cleared the splits. All of them.
Oldest to youngest, folded: the Nicholas Brothers draw K-pop, Elvis draws the internet, and the whole history of musicians-who-moved settles it on a sprung floor. Bell.
M1: The Nicholas Brothers (30s–40s) vs. Lisa (2020s) Tape: Fayard & Harold — weapon: the Stormy Weather staircase; signature move: leapfrog splits that read as CGI eighty years early. Lisa — weapon: frame-perfect K-pop isolation; signature move: hitting a beat so exactly the beat apologizes. Lisa is flawless. The Brothers respond by producing an actual staircase from backstage and descending it in leapfrog splits, no cuts, no wires, live. The building files the footage as evidence. WINNERS: THE NICHOLAS BROTHERS.
M2: Cab Calloway (30s–40s) vs. Tate McRae Mr. Irrelevant's museum field trip, part one. Tate's technique is genuinely elite — trained dancer, real weapons. But Calloway hits the buck-and-wing in a zoot suit with a wingspan measured in yards, hollers one Hi-De-Ho, and the crowd answers involuntarily like it's 1934. WINNER: CALLOWAY. Tate posts "fine." again. The committee is scared.
M3: Elvis Presley (50s) vs. Doja Cat (2020s) Seventy years of hip movement in one ring. Doja's viral fluidity vs. the hips that broke television. Elvis does the thing that got him filmed from the waist up in 1956, and the arena cameras — out of pure historical reflex — tilt up. You can't fight what the cameras won't show. WINNER: ELVIS.
M4: Jackie Wilson (50s–60s) vs. Normani (2020s) Mr. Excitement vs. the best pure dancer of her class. Normani throws a routine that would win most decades. Jackie does a knee-drop into a split into a spin WHILE holding a high note, which is three separate hazards performed as one. WINNER: JACKIE WILSON.
M5: James Brown (60s) vs. Jung Kook (2010s–20s) The Godfather vs. the golden maknae. Jung Kook's precision is military. JB's feet are simply not governed by the same physics — the camel walk crosses the ring before Jung Kook's choreography count reaches "five, six, seven, eight." WINNER: JAMES BROWN, by tempo violation.
M6: Tina Turner (60s–70s) vs. Shakira (2010s) The legs vs. the hips: an anatomical summit. Shakira's polygraph-proof hips take round one. Then Proud Mary reaches the rough part, and the rough part remains undefeated. WINNER: TINA.
M7: Michael Jackson (70s–80s) vs. Bruno Mars (2010s) The tribute-act paradox: Bruno openly built his stagecraft on Michael's blueprint, so this is a man fighting his own textbook. Bruno executes the blueprint beautifully. Michael responds by writing a new page of it live — a lean, a spin, a toe-stand — and the textbook updates itself mid-fight. WINNER: MICHAEL, by revised edition.
M8: Prince (80s) vs. Beyoncé (2010s) UPSET ALERT, and what a bout. Prince does splits in heels while playing a guitar solo, which should end it. But Beyoncé brings the Coachella drumline, the formation, the two-hour-cardio engine, and simply outlasts the purple storm on volume of perfection. WINNER: BEYONCÉ. Logged. Prince exits with one raised eyebrow, which in Prince units is a full concession speech.
M9: Madonna (80s) vs. Chris Brown (00s–10s) Reinvention vs. raw technique. On pure dance mechanics — this baton's jurisdiction — Chris Brown's footwork is a generation ahead. Vogue is a monument; the monument gets out-danced. WINNER: CHRIS BROWN.
M10: MC Hammer (late 80s–90s) vs. Ciara (00s) The parachute pants achieve liftoff, and for ninety glorious seconds it's 1990 forever. Then Ciara does the "Promise" chair-free lean-back matrix move and the pants deflate in respect. WINNER: CIARA.
M11: Bobby Brown (90s) vs. Britney Spears (00s) The King of Stage vs. the queen of the rehearsal room. Bobby invented moves with his own name on them; Britney drilled routines until the mirror got tired. Peak-era Britney's precision edges the freestyle king. WINNER: BRITNEY.
M12: Janet Jackson (90s) vs. Usher (00s) The tightest bout on any card in the tournament, exactly as prophesied. Same school: precision. Same religion: the eight-count. Seven full rounds. Usher's smoothness vs. Janet's drill-team exactness, trading perfect combinations until the judges need slow motion. Split decision — and the Rhythm Nation formation break is the tiebreaker frame. WINNER: JANET, by a single frame of video. Usher demands the rematch. Granted, someday. The dome needs to recover first.
Nicholas Brothers vs. Calloway — the two oldest acts in the tournament, and they've ACTUALLY shared stages — the Brothers came up performing at the Cotton Club in the Calloway orbit. The family reunion turns competitive; the staircase settles it, as it settles everything. WINNERS: NICHOLAS BROTHERS.
Elvis vs. Jackie Wilson — the séance of the round: Elvis openly admired Jackie's stagecraft, and tonight the admiration is mutual and ARMED. Jackie's knee-drop-split-spin combo against Elvis's full-body swagger. The polish of Mr. Excitement edges the swivel. WINNER: JACKIE WILSON, and Elvis salutes him on the way out, which is historically accurate behavior.
James Brown vs. Tina Turner — two revues, one ring, roughly nine thousand calories burned. Tina's stamina is legendary; JB's footspeed is supernatural. The cape routine makes its first appearance of the tournament — he collapses, he's covered, he THROWS IT OFF and hits a spin. Theater wins. WINNER: JAMES BROWN.
Michael vs. Beyoncé — the two greatest live perfectionists of the modern era. Beyoncé matches him step for step longer than anyone ever has. Michael goes to the toe-stand — the move that requires ankle tendons on loan from another species. WINNER: MICHAEL.
Chris Brown vs. Ciara — the 2000s technique summit, two dancers who have actually traded steps on record. Footwork vs. fluidity at the highest level; Ciara's control on the slow-motion material breaks the tie. WINNER: CIARA.
Britney vs. Janet — the blueprint vs. the building. Britney trained her whole career on the Janet manual, and fighting the author of your manual is the tribute-act paradox all over again. WINNER: JANET.
Survivors: Nicholas Brothers, Jackie Wilson, James Brown, Michael, Ciara, Janet. Résumé-of-victims byes: MICHAEL (through Bruno and Beyoncé — the two hardest modern outs) and JAMES BROWN (through Jung Kook and Tina). Play-ins:
Nicholas Brothers vs. Jackie Wilson — elegance summit. Jackie's combinations are electric, but the staircase has now beaten three eras in one week and shows no wear. WINNERS: NICHOLAS BROTHERS.
Ciara vs. Janet — the student-of-the-school vs. the dean. Ciara's matrix lean-back is the single best move of her round, but Janet has a full NATION in formation behind her. WINNER: JANET.
Michael vs. The Nicholas Brothers — and here is where the dome gets quiet, because Michael has SAID it, publicly, on the record: the Nicholas Brothers were among his idols. He studied the staircase. The Brothers open with it one more time; Michael answers with the Motown 25 moonwalk, and for one impossible minute, 1943 and 1983 are the same year. The student's arsenal is simply wider — the lean, the toe-stand, the glide. He wins, and then he BOWS, longer than the referee technically allows. WINNER: MICHAEL.
James Brown vs. Janet — the Godfather vs. the family's precision engineer. Janet's formations are flawless; JB simply refuses to stand where a formation can find him. Fastest feet in the history of the job. WINNER: JAMES BROWN.
The student vs. the teacher. The bout the whole baton has been about since 1965 — since a ten-year-old at the Apollo watched James Brown's footwork like it was a message meant only for him.
Michael opens with everything: the moonwalk, the lean, the spin-and-freeze. It is, and there is no argument, the greatest single arsenal any dancer-musician has ever carried. But this is the TIME MACHINE bracket — the era-war belt — and the era-war question isn't "whose arsenal is bigger," it's "whose floor is everyone standing on." And every move Michael throws tonight travels down a supply line that starts at James Brown's feet. The camel walk begat the moonwalk. The spins begat the spins. The cape drama begat the whole idea that a performance could be a WRESTLING MATCH with your own exhaustion. The teacher takes everything the student throws, grins the grin of a man watching his best lesson pay off, and answers with footwork that — even now, even here — nobody can fully transcribe.
The bedrock wins the bedrock bracket. It always does.
TIME MACHINE CHAMPION — BEST DANCER, ANY ERA: JAMES BROWN.
The Godfather takes the first belt, drops into a split at the bell because he can, and points at Michael with unmistakable meaning: your bracket's next, kid. Come get yours. The Title Fight starts Saturday. Bring a poncho for the splits zone.
Power seeding, no history clause, sprung floor certified. Seeds nine through twenty-four open the card. Bell.
9 Jackie Wilson vs. 24 Tate McRae — Museum field trip, part two. Tate fights hard — genuinely elite technique — but Mr. Excitement's knee-drop-into-split-into-spin arrives holding a sustained note, and the judges rule it a triple move. WINNER: JACKIE WILSON. Tate exits 0-2 with the whole dome chanting her name, the third Mr. Irrelevant in a row to lose the bracket and win the crowd.
10 Elvis Presley vs. 23 Doja Cat — The rematch from chronology, and Doja adjusts brilliantly, taking the fight to the internet's tempo. But the hips that broke television remain broadcast-proof. WINNER: ELVIS.
11 Chris Brown vs. 22 Lisa — UPSET. Pound-for-pound the most technical bout of round one. Chris's footwork is generational — but Lisa's frame-perfect isolations never miss a single count for three full rounds, a precision streak the judges have never scored before. K-pop's sharpest weapon draws first blood on the seeds. WINNER: LISA. Logged.
12 Bruno Mars vs. 21 Jung Kook — Two students of the same fedora'd textbook. Bruno's old-school showmanship, the James-and-Michael revue energy, against Jung Kook's drilled exactness. Showmanship swings it — Bruno performs AT you. WINNER: BRUNO.
13 Ciara vs. 20 MC Hammer — The rematch nobody scheduled but chronology already spoiled: the pants achieve altitude, the matrix lean-back achieves immortality. WINNER: CIARA.
14 Madonna vs. 19 Normani — UPSET. Madonna's catalog of reinventions is unmatched, but this baton scores the BODY, and Normani is the best pure dancer of her generation with the receipts to prove it live. WINNER: NORMANI. Logged.
15 Cab Calloway vs. 18 Britney Spears — The zoot suit vs. the rehearsal-room queen, ninety years apart. Britney drills; Cab CONJURES — the Hi-De-Ho call-and-response weaponizes the audience itself, and suddenly Britney is dancing in enemy territory. WINNER: CALLOWAY.
16 Bobby Brown vs. 17 Shakira — UPSET (by one seed line, but logged on principle). The King of Stage invented his own moves; Shakira's hips have never once perjured themselves. Truth wins. WINNER: SHAKIRA.
1 Michael Jackson vs. 17 Shakira — The hips meet the lean. Shakira's lie-detector never fails; Michael's 45-degree Smooth Criminal lean fails PHYSICS, which outranks it. WINNER: MICHAEL.
8 Tina Turner vs. 9 Jackie Wilson — UPSET, and a heartbreaker. Two revue legends emptying the tank. Proud Mary's rough part meets Mr. Excitement's whole personality, and Jackie — the man both Elvis AND James Brown watched from the wings — hits the split-spin-note trifecta one more time. WINNER: JACKIE WILSON. Logged. Tina exits to Simply the Best chants, which is the crowd editorializing correctly.
5 Janet Jackson vs. 12 Bruno Mars — The tightest technical seed-line on the card, exactly as the committee predicted. Bruno's revue vs. Janet's drill. Formation break decides it again — Janet's unit precision is the tournament's most reliable weapon. WINNER: JANET.
4 Prince vs. 13 Ciara — Ciara's matrix lean vs. splits-in-heels-while-soloing. Prince does all of his simultaneously. WINNER: PRINCE.
6 Beyoncé vs. 22 Lisa — Cinderella meets the machine. Lisa never misses a count; Beyoncé brings a marching band, a pyramid of dancers, and lungs that don't acknowledge cardio. Volume of perfection wins again. WINNER: BEYONCÉ.
3 Nicholas Brothers vs. 19 Normani — Normani, a scholar of the greats, reportedly watches the staircase clip before her own rehearsals. Tonight she watches it live, from very close range. WINNERS: NICHOLAS BROTHERS.
7 Usher vs. 10 Elvis — The smoothest man of the 2000s vs. the swivel that started the whole rock-and-roll fuss. Usher glides through eras Elvis never met. WINNER: USHER.
2 James Brown vs. 15 Cab Calloway — THE ELDER DUEL. Two call-and-response sorcerers, thirty years apart, and historians will note young James Brown grew up in the world Calloway's showmanship built. Hi-De-Ho vs. the cape. The cape routine — collapse, cover, RESURRECTION — is simply the greatest single bit in live-performance history. WINNER: JAMES BROWN, and the two masters trade bows for a full minute.
Michael vs. Jackie Wilson — the family tree fights itself: Jackie's stagecraft fed the Motown machine that raised Michael. The elder lands his trifecta; the student answers with the moonwalk, which is the trifecta's grandchild wearing better shoes. WINNER: MICHAEL.
Janet vs. Prince — UPSET. The two most theatrical perfectionists of the 80s-90s corridor. Prince's chaos is divine, but Janet's Rhythm Nation drill is the one routine in history that chaos cannot penetrate — it has no gaps. WINNER: JANET. Logged, five over four.
Beyoncé vs. The Nicholas Brothers — the modern machine vs. the ancient miracle, and the closest the staircase has come to meeting its match: Beyoncé's Coachella pyramid is basically a staircase MADE OF PEOPLE. But Fayard and Harold descend theirs in leapfrog splits, and the judges rule you cannot leapfrog-split down human beings. Equipment advantage. WINNERS: NICHOLAS BROTHERS.
Usher vs. James Brown — the smooth heir vs. the source code. Usher glides; JB's feet type faster than the ring canvas can render. WINNER: JAMES BROWN.
Michael vs. Janet — THE SIBLING BOUT, and the dome cannot emotionally afford it. The "Scream" video reunion, live, competitive. Janet matches her brother beat for beat — the only person alive raised in the same living room as that talent. Seven counts of eight, dead even. Then the toe-stand. There is no family answer to the toe-stand. WINNER: MICHAEL, and the hug at the bell gets a louder pop than any finish this week.
The Nicholas Brothers vs. James Brown — UPSET, and the purists' dream come true. The Godfather's feet vs. the staircase, and for the first time all tournament, JB is fighting men who were doing the impossible before HIS influences had influences. Fayard and Harold go full Stormy Weather — the leapfrog splits, the no-cuts miracle — and the Hardest Working Man in Show Business does something he has never done: he stops working, for three seconds, to watch. Three seconds is a knockdown in the dome. WINNERS: THE NICHOLAS BROTHERS. Logged in gold ink. The column's proudest seed reaches the final.
The student of everyone vs. the teachers of everyone's teachers. Michael has idolized them openly his whole life; tonight the homework fights back.
Fayard and Harold open with the staircase — of course — and the crowd noise drops into that reverent hush that only 1943 can command. Michael answers move for move, era for era: the robot, the lean, the glide across the ring like the floor is made of the moon. The Brothers counter with full-split leapfrogs OVER EACH OTHER, which remains, eighty years on, the single most athletically absurd thing ever captured on film. And Michael — the completest arsenal in the history of movement — reaches for the one thing the Brothers never had: the fusion. Voice, dance, drama, video, stagecraft, ALL of it in one body, the entire baton's job description performed simultaneously. The moonwalk into the spin into the toe-stand freeze, held, held, HELD — and the bell.
TITLE FIGHT CHAMPION — BEST DANCER, ANY ERA: MICHAEL JACKSON.
He takes the belt, walks it directly to Fayard and Harold's corner, and holds it up to THEM first. The greatest arsenal salutes the deepest foundation. And in the front row, James Brown — Time Machine champ, unification bout pending — nods slowly at his student with a look that says the syllabus isn't finished. Teacher vs. student, one belt each. That rubber match might need two domes.
Every baton in this tournament has produced a story. The Dancers baton produced THE story — the one the whole category has been telling since a kid from Gary, Indiana first watched the Godfather of Soul work an audience like an instrument, and decided that was the job he wanted.
Strip the dome away and make the plain case. James Brown was, by broad consensus, the greatest live performer of the twentieth century — and the engine of that claim was his feet. The camel walk, the mashed potato, the good foot, the splits, the one-legged slides across the stage — Brown performed full-throttle choreography WHILE fronting the tightest band in show business and singing himself hoarse, night after night, decade after decade. The famous cape routine — collapsing in exhaustion, being draped and led away, then hurling the cape off for one more chorus — is the single greatest piece of theater ever built into a song, a bit so good it worked ten thousand times.
But the era-war belt isn't about the bits. It's about the supply lines, and virtually every supply line in this 24-chair field runs through him. Michael Jackson studied his footwork obsessively from childhood — he said so all his life, and you can watch a young MJ doing note-perfect James Brown on the Ed Sullivan-era circuit. Prince's stagecraft, Usher's revue instincts, the entire concept of the singer whose BODY is part of the arrangement — the floor under all of it was poured by the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, who himself came up in a world built by the Calloways and Jackie Wilsons he had to go through in this very bracket. In the bracket that measures generations against generations, the man whose moves became everyone's moves takes the belt. He beat Jung Kook, Tina, Janet, and the student himself in the final — because the bedrock wins the bedrock bracket. Every time.
TIME MACHINE CHAMPION, BEST DANCER OF ANY ERA: JAMES BROWN. Please, please, please — hold the applause. Actually, don't. He'd hate that.
Now the power case, which is the shortest case in the tournament because you already know all of it.
Motown 25, 1983: one man, one glove, one backwards glide, and the most replayed five seconds of movement in television history. The moonwalk didn't just become his signature — it became the world's shorthand for the concept of dancing itself. Around it: the Smooth Criminal lean, an anti-gravity illusion so extreme it was patented; the toe-stand freeze that closes routines like a signature closes a letter; the Thriller short film, which turned choreography into a global cultural event and made the dance BREAK the most anticipated part of a pop song. Michael took James Brown's footwork, Jackie Wilson's drama, the Nicholas Brothers' athletic impossibility, Fred Astaire's elegance — he named these debts himself, repeatedly — and fused them into the single most complete performance arsenal any musician has ever carried onto a stage.
That's why the power bracket was always his. The Title Fight asks who wins TONIGHT, full arsenal, no history clause — and nobody in ninety years of the job has carried more weapons. He went through Shakira, Jackie Wilson, his own sister in the most emotional bout of the tournament (the toe-stand broke the tie; the hug broke the crowd), and finally the Nicholas Brothers — his idols, the tournament's Cinderella miracle — in a final he ended by handing them the belt to hold first.
TITLE FIGHT CHAMPION, BEST DANCER OF ANY ERA: MICHAEL JACKSON. The student built on the teacher's floor and added a ceiling. The seeding committee wrote that a week ago. The bracket just proved it.
Here's what separates this split from the Producers' gentlemen's disagreement and the Keys' philosophical tie: these two champions have an ACTUAL relationship. Teacher and student. Idol and heir. The kid who studied the Godfather's feet grew up to redraw the ceiling of the whole art form, and now they hold one belt each. This isn't a promoter's invention — it's the true story of the category, told in bracket form.
So the unification stakes write themselves. Does the floor beat the ceiling, or does the ceiling need the floor? Does the man who invented the supply lines outrank the man who built the most beautiful thing at the end of them? The Time Machine says foundation; the Title Fight says arsenal; the bar full of music nerds says BOTH, loudly, forever, which is exactly the product this tournament sells.
Or maybe — final shrug of the week — the real answer is the one Michael gave with his own hands at the bell, holding the belt up to the Nicholas Brothers before wearing it himself: in this baton, nobody wins alone. Every champion is standing on somebody's staircase.
Yeah. Either that, or the rubber match ends in a dance-off at center ring and the judges just quietly leave, because some things you don't score. You just watch.
Iron man: James Brown holds Time Machine belts on BOTH the Frontmen and Dancers boards — the campaign’s only double-champ. See the Frontmen page for the mirror half.
Campaign pages: Guitarists · Frontmen · Drummers · Male Vocals · Female Vocals · Rap / Mc · Producers · Keys · One-Person Band · The Writers · Bassists · The 1950s · The 1960s · The 1990S · The 2000S · The Unification Card