Dance Lies & Video Tape (Season 21, Episode 17)
Premise: When a ballerina’s secretly filmed sex video turns up on a porn site, SVU uncovers a ballet company where male dancers trade such videos and the leadership uses them to coerce women.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 21, Episode 17
- Starring
- Capt. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish), Det. Katriona “Kat” Tamin (Jamie Gray Hyder), ADA Dominick “Sonny” Carisi Jr. (Peter Scanavino), Sgt. Hasim Khaldun (Ari’el Stachel)
- Guest stars
- Patrick Page as Alistair Woodford, John Hans Tester as Sascha Thomas, Annabel O’Hagan as Dehlia, Victoria Pollack as Rose Sullivan, John Waters as Pornmonger Man
- Director
- Leslie Hope
- Writers
- Story: Julie Martin & Warren Leight; Teleplay: Micharne Cloughley; Story & teleplay: Brendan Feeney
Summary
“Dance Lies & Video Tape” begins a week before a premiere at the National, where artistic director Alistair Woodford warns his dancers that the new ballet is a mess. Newcomer Dehlia slips into a secluded rehearsal room, Studio X, with her new boyfriend, principal dancer Brad. Days later a parent at the children’s class she teaches shows her boss a video of the encounter on a porn site, and Dehlia loses the job. Brad says he knew nothing about a camera, but CSU finds a mount ripped from the studio wall. Carisi leans on the porn site’s owner, who names the uploader, dancer Jason Harris. Jason’s phone shows the clip came from Brad, part of a group text in which Brad, Jason and Edward Jenkins swapped hidden-camera sex videos of company women and kept score.
Brad’s mother, Attorney Turner, offers testimony from Brad and Edward that Jason set up the camera if their charges drop to misdemeanors. Jason denies it and says choreographer Sascha Thomas watched the videos and had any he liked deleted after asking the woman out. Soloist Tina Bishop admits Sascha kept her video private, and gave her a solo, in return for her repeating with him what it showed; she insists it was not rape. The other dancers will not talk, and Dehlia’s face is run through facial recognition, attaching her name to the video across the internet.
Rose Sullivan, a principal who quit a year earlier, says Sascha coerced her the same way. When she went to Alistair, he threatened to leak her tape and blacklist her unless she let him auction her off at the annual gala, where dinner with a ballerina is the top lot and more is expected. Treating it as sex trafficking, the squad sends Sgt. Hasim Khaldun to the gala posing as a Silicon Valley millionaire. Alistair accepts a six-figure bid for principal Ashley Fallon. In the hotel suite Khaldun stops her, and she says Alistair forced her with a video of her, Brad and Jason that Sascha had handed him.
Spoiler, the ending: Benson arrests Alistair and Sascha. Both plead guilty to felonies and will serve prison time, while Jason faces a few months. Brad and Edward are fired and sue for wrongful termination, and the company’s new board hires an all-female artistic team. Dehlia says she can no longer picture herself onstage without thinking of the audience having seen the video online, which will never go away.
Why it stands out
- Ari’el Stachel returns as Sgt. Hasim Khaldun, introduced three episodes earlier in “I Deserve Some Loving Too.”
- Filmmaker John Waters plays the porn site’s owner, credited as Pornmonger Man; he returns in the role in Season 22.
- Aired March 26, 2020, about two weeks after the COVID-19 pandemic shut down production of the season.