Why Taylor Swift Allowed a Male Dancer to Fulfill His 'Meaningful' Eras Tour Dream to Join an All-Female Performance Number
- - Why Taylor Swift Allowed a Male Dancer to Fulfill His 'Meaningful' Eras Tour Dream to Join an All-Female Performance Number
Jeff NelsonDecember 19, 2025 at 10:55 PM
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Taylor Swift performing with dancer Whyley Yoshiumura (bottom right) at the Oct. 25, 2024 Eras Tour date in New Orleans. -
The first four episodes of the new docuseries Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour | The End of an Era are streaming now on Disney+
The fourth episode recounts how dancer Whyley Yoshimura joined Swift and a group of all-female dancers for a performance of "...Ready For It?"
In the docuseries, Yoshimura says that he's "honored that I get to share the stage with someone who sees me — and not only sees me, she celebrates me"
In the middle of an Eras Tour show, Taylor Swift let one of her dancers fulfill one of his dreams.
During a New Orleans stop of her record-breaking tour, the pop superstar approved her dancer Whyley Yoshimura to join the all-female group of dancers during their performance of "...Ready For It?" in 2024.
"I just remember watching it be created and just living in perpetual envy the whole tour," Yoshimura says in the fourth episode of Swift's new Disney+ docuseries, Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour | The End of an Era. He later adds, "I just love performing and doing really dope moves to really dope music. The feeling of the song and the lyrics, it’s a monumental number. So from the beginning, it was my favorite piece."
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty
Whyley Yoshimura at the Oct. 11, 2023 premiere of the 'Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour' concert film
In behind-the-scenes footage in the episode, Yoshimura can be seen practicing with Amanda Balen, the tour's dance captain and associate choreographer, before she lets him try on her Reputation-era bodysuit — then ask Swift for permission for him to replace her for the night's performance. After seeing phone footage of Yoshimura rehearsing, Swift doesn't hesitate before saying, "Yes, hundred percent. That's amazing."
"Whyley, as a dancer and a performer, he can really channel that kind of, like, sexy, femme side of himself. Whyley wanting to be in ‘...Ready For It?’ was just like so refreshing, so I was like, of course," Swift, 36, later explains of her decision.
As he hit the stage, Yoshimura's fellow dancers who weren't onstage cheered him on from the audience, smiling and filming him as he hit every step.
A Hawaii native, Yoshimura began dancing at age 7 and found confidence through the art form because, "I wasn’t the typical masculine local boy," he says — and Swift's simple approval of him stepping in for the performance that night was a significant gesture.
Kevin Mazur/TAS24/Getty
Swift performing on the Eras Tour with her dancers, including Whyley Yoshimura (far left), in May 2024 in Paris
When Yoshimura got into the dance industry in 2007, "You had to like fit into a certain stereotype," he says. "I was always told, ‘Whyley, you’re great, but you flip your hair too much’ or ‘You’re too feminine.’ That stuck with me through different jobs, being told different things about my appearance."
Adds Yoshimura, "This job, no one told me I needed to be buff. Taylor never made me cut my hair. I wear different color eye shadows in different nights. It’s been almost 150 shows, and Taylor not has once said, ‘Whyley, please stop doing that.’ Never. I have never been filtered as a person of who I present myself on stage with her and neither has any of my coworkers, and that may seem so small, but as a dancer who has been told to change, to filter himself for almost 20 years, it is one of the most meaningful things to me. It is so empowering. It is so loving. It is so enriching and so much fun."
Kevin Mazur/Getty
Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour with her dancers, including Whyley Yoshimura (left), in London in June 2024
Elsewhere in the docuseries, Swift opened up about the importance of inclusivity in her crew on the tour.
"You know, with this tour, we’re not very like…We’re not trying to make any points about gender, but we just don’t really have any kind of restrictions. We got guys in heels and leotards and stuff, and we just don’t really think too hard about it, right? If you look at ‘Look What You Made Me Do,’ you have women and men dressed up in my former costumes," she says. "We just don’t really overthink it. And I think that’s just one of the most things about, you know, the way we’ve approached this tour. We overthink certain things; we let some things just kind of…just be naturally individualistic in terms of our casting and our dancers’ expression."
Growing emotional in a confessional interview for the show, Yoshimura says he was "so honored" that Swift herself trusted him.
"But I’m even more honored that I get to share the stage with someone who sees me — and not only sees me, she celebrates me," he says. "She looks at me on the left…and she had, like, the biggest smile on her face and the shiniest sparkle in her eye. It’s not really that often where a male dancer can do, like, a female swinging part and even be allowed, like, flourish as much as he wants in that part. I wanna be that example for anyone, any person — male, female, non-binary — I want them to feel seen, just like how I felt seen by Taylor."
The first four episodes of Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour | The End of an Era are streaming now on Disney+. The six-part docuseries offers a behind-the-scenes look at how the record-shattering tour came together and also highlights stories from Swift's dancers, musicians and crew. The final two episodes of The End of an Era will begin streaming Dec. 23 on Disney+.
on People
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
