Watch Conan O’Brien Master Modern Dance at Alvin Ailey Theatre
Conan O’Brien‘s Harlem odyssey continued Tuesday night with a visit to the famed Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, where the lanky late-night host attempted to learn modern dance over the course of one lesson.
Under the tutelage of co-director Tracy Inman, O’Brien morphs from a clumsy, uncoordinated and rigid amateur into… essentially the same thing. However, with a little help from some editing room CGI, O’Brien masters the art of modern dance by the end of the segment.
O’Brien punctuated his lesson by taking over the bongos and forcing his classmates to play a round of Freeze Dance. After three dancers were eliminated for pirouetting after O’Brien stopped playing music, he told the losers, “You’re all now Uber drivers.”
Later in the Conan episode, three of O’Brien’s Alvin Ailey classmates – Solomon Dumas, Sean Aaron Carmon and Kanji Segawa (and thankfully not Conan himself) – delivered a modern dance performance of “Sinner Man” from Revelations at Harlem’s Apollo Theatre.
Conan‘s week in Harlem continues Wednesday night.