Lady Gaga’s former backup dancer says he experienced “permanent” hearing loss while on tour with her.
On Friday, Graham Breitenstein, 35, shared a series of videos on his Instagram account detailing his experience on Gaga’s Monster Ball Tour The tour, which ran between 2009 to 2011, was his first high-profile gig. While onstage during the tour’s European leg, Breitenstein said he felt something was wrong.
“While I was on stage, I believe I was in Germany or France, I had an experience on stage where my left ear … all of a sudden it sounded like the crowd was in my ear the whole time,” said Breitenstein, who described the sensation like someone holding up a seashell to his ear. “We didn’t have in-ears at this time. So it was just raw ears in all these arenas.”
When he initially brought his concerns to the tour’s production staff, Breitenstein claimed that a “rock doc,” or a doctor that is brought in on tours to do what’s necessary to get a performer back on stage, found fluid in his ear and prescribed him medication to treat it. After the fluid eventually cleared, the dancer claimed that the problem still persisted.
Breitenstein said he asked to see a specialist but wasn’t given the opportunity to do so “for several weeks.”
When the tour returned to the U.S. for a second leg, Breitenstein was able to get an appointment with an ENT (ear, nose, and throat) specialist with the help of a production designer. At the visit, Breitenstein was given a grim diagnosis.
“I found out that I had lost 70 percent of hearing in my left ear and that it was permanent,” he said, adding that he was told his hearing loss could have been reversed if it was treated in the first two weeks of the onset with a direct shot of steroids.
He continued, “But we were six weeks [in] and it was too late. I would have to live the rest of my life with 30 percent of hearing in my left ear and full hearing in my right ear. So to say that I was devastated … is an understatement.”
The dancer claims he turned to leadership at the time, which included his friend, Richard “Richy” Jackson. Jackson at the time was serving as the assistant choreographer, who was working with Laurieann Gibson, Gaga’s lead choreographer. Jackson was eventually promoted to lead choreographer after Gibson’s firing in 2011.
“I called him and mentioned what was going on. He told me that he wasn’t gonna tell Laurieann what happened because if so, I would be fired. Being 24 at the time… at my first professional, big-time, high-profile experience, I trusted that what my friend was telling me was in my best interest,” said Breitenstein. “I don’t think to this day Laurieann knows that this took place.”
Breitenstein says he was eventually able to secure a pair of in-ears for the tour, despite some pushback from the tour’s director.
While on a break from the Monster Ball Tour, the dancer shared the news with his family and friends and they encouraged him to file for worker’s compensation. Despite getting an MRI and visiting an ENT in Los Angeles, Breitenstein claims he was immediately denied compensation by Live Nation and was intimidated by seven lawyers who allegedly sent him letters and made phone calls to him.
“I didn’t understand how I could be denied worker’s compensation when the writing was all there. [It was] on tour, on stage when this happened,” he said.
Breitenstein returned to dance with Gaga for more world tours and other high profile performances, including her 2017 Super Bowl Halftime Show, her Coachella headlining slot, and was briefly involved with her Chromatica album promotions before the pandemic stalled everything in 2020.
The dancer also claims that he was teased by some of his peers, likening him to Alma from Sister Act, a character who is hard of hearing and is told by Whoopi Goldberg’s character to turn her hearing aid up.
Breitenstein alleges that Gaga never told of the events that transpired and that he did not have direct access to her. He claims to have received an inquiry from her new management team to have a one-on-one conversation about the events that unfolded. He says he responded with a “six page” recollection of events, but nothing came from it.
“We are not protected with unions on tour,” Breitenstein said on Instagram. “There’s no HR, there’s no one to go to say that is fully pulled out of an totally objective and for you to just go ‘Hey, I’m experiencing issues with my hearing and … I’m being denied access to see a specialist to get it looked at.’”
In 2022, 10 former dancers for Lady Gaga came forward accusing “Richy” Jackson of creating an “unsafe” and “unhealthy” workplace, according to Rolling Stone. The dancers who spoke of Jackson’s alleged “toxic” and “abusive” behavior all spoke highly of Gaga to the publication, saying she had “nothing to do” with the situation.
Last year, Jackson told Page Six that he was perplexed by the claims and chose not to speak out at the time to avoid distracting from the work happening on Gaga’s Chromatica Tour.
“Maybe I took something away from them that they felt: ‘This is who I am now,’” Jackson told the outlet. “In their own world, they were ‘Gaga dancers.’ Because she’s at the height of the artist world. And that’s now been taken away. I feel like that’s why we’re here.”
On the other hand, Breitenstein says he came forward with his story for newcomers who want to come into the industry.
“I hope my story serves a resource for other dancers that wanna perform at a high level, that want to perform in big jobs, big tours, big projects," he said. "And that if they face any similar obstacles that I have that they have somewhere to point and go, ‘Well, this is what happened to him, and I don’t want that to happen to me.’”
