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Hailey Jade: The Young Dancer Who Opened the 2017 Billboard Music Awards

At just eight years old, she stood at the front of one of the biggest stages in music — opening the show beside Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne and Jason Derulo. Dance Mogul Magazine first told her story in 2017. We are proud to preserve it.

By Dance Mogul Magazine  |  Originally featured June 2017  |  Updated and expanded 2026

Hailey Jade — young dancer, 2017 Billboard Music Awards performer | Photo: Dance Mogul Magazine Archives

Every once in a while, Dance Mogul Magazine sits down with an artist whose story is only just beginning — and captures a moment so pure it deserves to be preserved exactly as it happened. In June 2017, we spoke with Hailey Jade, a young dancer who had just done something most professionals wait an entire career for: she opened one of the biggest live award shows in the world.

Nearly a decade later, her words still carry the same spark. This is a young person describing, in her own voice, what it feels like to chase a dream and catch it early — the daily hours in the studio, the mentor who believed in her, and the night the music started and millions of people were watching. Dance Mogul Magazine is proud to bring her original interview into our current editorial home, preserved word for word, so that the moment lives on.

The Original Interview — In Her Own Words

Dance Mogul: What inspired you to start dancing?
Hailey Jade: I’ve always had older friends because they were the daughters of my moms’ friends and some of them were dancing already. I saw that they liked going to dance and I liked how they dressed and I asked my mom to buy me a tutu and to take me to a dance school. So when I was two years old, about to turn three, she took me to my first ballet and tap class and I tried it and loved it. It made me feel happy. Anytime I heard music I would dance anywhere. Feeling the music inspired me to dance. Then, my teachers and my friends inspired me to keep dancing and working hard at dance.

Dance Mogul: How did you prepare for each opportunity that has taken you to a professional level?
Hailey Jade: I dance a lot and I practice every day, many long hours of dance. My dance teachers prepare me to be ready to handle any opportunity that comes my way. They have helped me by preparing me to be professional and give it my all, with a great attitude. Training in all styles of dance has helped me also.

Dance Mogul: How do you balance your passion with your childhood?
Hailey Jade: Besides my passion for dancing, there are other things that I like to do. I might not be able to do it often because of my dance schedule, but I still take time to hang out with my friends and play games, watch movies. I like to read, I like to go to the mall and I like to play outside with my brother. I also end up always doing fun stuff with my friends, usually my dance friends, but then we still end up dancing no matter where we are.

Dance Mogul: What have been some of your favorite moments so far on stage?
Hailey Jade: There was one time when I was about to perform my solo on stage and when I was about to start, the music wasn’t the correct one, it was an old song that I had performed in the past. I could have easily ran off the stage, but something told me to stay and just dance. I ended up dancing a whole routine on the spot and improvising the whole thing. I still ended up getting 1st place. My dance teacher was so proud of me and she told me that many other dancers would either freeze or run off the stage. My other favorite moment on stage was that I just recently danced on the 2017 Live Billboard Music Awards stage right next to Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, and Jason Derulo. It was such an amazing feeling to be in the middle and I opened the show and was the first person all the millions of people watching got to see when the show started. It was the best day ever.

Dance Mogul: What is it like working with Tricia Miranda?
Hailey Jade: It’s very fun, even though sometimes it can be hard. She has the best choreography always and I love her so much. I look up to her and she is like a mother to me. She trains me really hard especially because she knows I can do it. I love working with her and I can’t wait to keep training with Tricia because she is so amazing. She is also really funny and makes me laugh.

Dance Mogul: What are some of your future goals professionally and academically?
Hailey Jade: I want to be a dance teacher when I grow up. I want to dance on a big stage again. Academically, I want to get all straight A’s in school. I want to get honor roll in the 3rd grade and I want to get student of the month.

Dance Mogul: Take us behind the scenes of the 2017 Billboard Music Awards experience for you.
Hailey Jade: I loved this experience a lot. It was so much fun. It was so cool to be able to be around so many other awesome dancers that I look up to because I’ve seen them dance other places before. We were able to hang out and make jokes. There were only three children dancers, which were me, my friend Angelina and my other friend Lilly. So we made it fun with the older dancers because we played and joked around with them when we had time off from practicing. Everything was really professional and we had to be very focused and mature. I was able to meet so many famous people. I took a lot of pictures. They gave us really good food and I loved our costumes. Nicki Minaj was so nice during rehearsals and she did an amazing performance. I also got to speak to Jason Derulo who was so cool and super nice. Tricia Miranda, Cat Rendic and Sohey Sugihara did such an amazing job with the choreography and the creativity with the direction of Jamie King for our performance. It was the best experience ever and I will never forget it, ever! I still feel like I am dreaming.

Behind the scenes with the cast of dancers | Dance Mogul Magazine Archives

Dance Mogul: Is there anyone you would like to thank for helping you on your journey thus far?
Hailey Jade: The people I would like to thank for helping me on my journey are Tricia Miranda, Carmelo Cruz, CJ Cochise, Sasha Herrera, Alana Canelo, Ms. Rosemary (Dance Fusion Teachers), everyone at Clear Talent Group NY/LA, Josefina Garcia (J&L Dance Teachers), my mom, my brother Julian, my baby sister Ava and my dad, Camp Pulse — which was my first dance convention I attended at age 4 — all my dance brothers and sisters from Kozmic Edge, Dance Fusion, J&L and all my dance friends from all over that have supported me always, and last I want to thank all the choreographers that I have worked with either in a master class or convention. They have all pushed me to work hard and I have learned something from each and every one of them.

The Night She Opened the Show

To understand the size of that moment, it helps to remember what the 2017 Billboard Music Awards opening actually was. On May 21, 2017, live from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nicki Minaj launched the broadcast with a roughly nine-minute, four-song medley — running through “No Frauds” with Lil Wayne, “Light My Body Up” with David Guetta, “Swalla” with Jason Derulo, and her solo single “Regret in Your Tears.” It was the first thing the entire television audience saw when the show began.

That production was choreographed by Tricia Miranda, one of the most in-demand choreographers in commercial dance, working alongside assistant choreographers Cat Rendic and Sohey Sugihara under the direction of Jamie King. Miranda has built a reputation not only for her work with artists like Beyoncé, Missy Elliott and Nicki Minaj, but for mentoring young dancers — some of whom she began training as early as age five — and giving them real professional opportunities. In her own accounts of that Billboard opening, Miranda has said she had a say in the talent hired and booked many of the young dancers she mentors. Hailey Jade was one of them.

Read that way, this is not simply a story about a child on a big stage. It is a story about a training pipeline doing exactly what it is supposed to do: a young dancer puts in the hours, a mentor recognizes the work, and a door opens. Hailey named that mentor plainly — “she is like a mother to me” — and the record shows the trust ran both ways.

Where Is Hailey Jade Now?

Here is where Dance Mogul Magazine holds a firm editorial line. Hailey Jade was a young child when this interview was published in 2017, which makes her a minor still today. We do not track down, publish, or speculate about the private, day-to-day life of someone who was a kid when we featured them, and we will not attach unverified claims to her name simply to fill a “now” section. What we can say with confidence is what the public record supports.

The milestone itself is permanent: her name belongs to the group of young dancers who performed in the opening number of a nationally televised award show in 2017. The mentorship that made it possible — Tricia Miranda’s long track record of preparing young dancers for professional stages — is well documented, and the artists who have come through that world have gone on to real careers in the industry. If Hailey Jade has continued to build on the foundation described in this interview, it is a foundation that was already remarkably strong for someone her age.

Why It Matters to Dance Mogul Magazine

Dance Mogul Magazine was built on a simple belief: dance is a path to self-empowerment, and every artist deserves to have their story told with dignity — whether they are a seasoned legend or an eight-year-old opening a live award show. That is why this interview lives in our Exclusive Interviews archive, and why we take the time to preserve pieces like this rather than let them disappear into an old server.

Hailey’s words carry the exact values we champion across every dance style we cover — discipline, gratitude, mentorship, and the courage to keep dancing even when the music comes on wrong. She trained across ballet, tap and hip-hop; she credited her teachers by name; and when a routine fell apart on stage, she chose to stay and finish. Those are the instincts that carry a dancer through an entire career, and they are exactly what the young readers who find their own history in our Dance Industry coverage deserve to see modeled.

The Story Continues

There is something rare about hearing a professional milestone described by the person living it — before the industry has taught them how they are “supposed” to sound. Hailey Jade’s 2017 interview is that: pure, grateful, and full of the kind of joy that made her want to dance anywhere she heard music. Nearly a decade on, it reads not as a footnote but as a beginning.

Dance Mogul Magazine will keep preserving these moments — the debuts and the legends, the seen and the still-rising — because the culture is built as much by the young dancer opening the show as by the headliner she opens for. Wherever the music has taken Hailey Jade since, we are proud that her first big story was told here, and we are honored to keep it alive.

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