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Spreading Love: It’s the Brooklynettes Way.
As the Brooklyn Nets prepare to face the Milwaukee Bucks in Game Five of the Eastern League playoffs in the NBA on Tuesday, the team’s all-female dance group keeps energy high — and rebounding from the pandemic.
“It wasn’t until very recently when we were like, ‘Wait, I think we’re the only ones who actually put in their bids,'” Brooklynettes boss Asha Singh told The Post.
During the pandemic, the dance team has been practicing via Zoom in order to keep their movements sharp Stephen Yang
Singh, 31, added, “But the comeback has been like running business as usual for us. Our level of excellence, our Brooklyn benchmark, has always been top notch.”
The former dancer-turned-trainer and 20 hoofers resumed in-person performances at the Barclays Center in February — nearly a year after the COVID-19 outbreak put them on indefinite leave of absence.
When the National Basketball Association suspended the 2019-20 season last March, it left the league’s 30 dance teams — one for each team — out of business. Even when matches resumed in July, with teams living and playing inside a “bubble” in Orlando, Florida, the dancers were not included.
It’s time to play as Brooklynettes Pamela Gaccione (left) and Celine Edmondson (right) rock the ring.
“It shook our whole world. It was in the middle of her first year as a coach,” said Singh, who was in the middle of her first year as a coach.[We went] From a high-energy schedule to nothing.”
The Kansas City native has been dancing since she was five years old. Prior to joining the Brooklynettes in 2013, Singh performed on stage with artists such as Beyoncé and Alicia Keys. But the epidemic severely stopped it for the first time.
Like most New Yorkers, she and her dancers spent the first few weeks of quarantine indoors, awaiting the uncertainty of the virus. Testing for the 2020-2021 Brooklynettes season has been cancelled.
Instead of dancing on the field during game time, the girl does her job on the new stages recently built inside Barclays. Alison Joseph / @shotsbyalliej
But the band didn’t stay still for long — after all, video calls aren’t just for office workers.
“We did rehearsals on Zoom,” said team leader and choreographer Pamela Gaccioni, who started dancing for Nets Kids at age 12, when the team was still representing Garden State. (She joined the adult team eight years ago, at the age of 18.)
“Of course there were challenges,” she added, noting intermittent setbacks to Wi-Fi and space constraints. Some girls can hardly hit a high kick without hitting the furniture in their apartments.
Dance singers Ashley B and Celine Edmondson represent their band with strength and beauty
Add that to the fact that many women—including Gaccioni, a fifth-grade social studies teacher—were also saving between jobs and family obligations. “All of us on the team are not just dancers,” she said. Some have also been dealing with the stress of not being able to work at their second jobs during the lockdown. “Many of us are professional actors and models, some are fitness trainers and some are chefs.”
But he finally got to the point that dancing at home was too restrictive.
“Often the dancers had to take the choreography that was given via Zoom to a larger area to try it out,” Gaccioni said. A few girls outside of Barclays met up and ran into their moves together socially apart.
The team breaks a stride on stage for more than 15,000 lovable fans. Alison Joseph / @shotsbyalliej
Now that they’re back at Barclays, there are some changes. In the pre-pandemic days, women took to the courtroom to wow the crowd. Now, as the regulations change, they dance on two recently built stages inside the venue or on platforms next to the fans in the stands.
“I can’t even explain the energy,” Brooklynnet co-leader Celine Edmondson, a 25-year-old professional dancer who performed with Maluma at the 2020 VMAs, said of recent audiences. “It is unparalleled.”
We hear fans screaming, ‘I love you Brooklynnets, you’re the best,’ said Singh, who is usually on the sidelines watching the dancers’ every move! “You can feel the energy exchange between the fans and the dancers. It was really unbelievable.”
She admitted that there was one challenge: “We had to relearn how to dance with the mask on.
When it comes to quality performance [and] How to play eye expressions, I tell the ladies to smile under the masks. It just makes everything look shinier.”
But Gaccioni said that, as with many of last year’s hurdles, this one has made the Brooklynettes even better.
“It forced us to perform 10 times more with our bodies and our body language,” she said.
“The fact that we were able to … come back in person and be stronger than we were, it’s amazing.”
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