Eras Tour Performer Kam Saunders Honors "Boss Lady" Taylor Swift on Her Birthday

Eras Tour performer Kam Saunders paid tribute to his "boss lady" Taylor Swift for her 36th birthday.

"To my girl... my boss lady! It’s been three years now that we’ve gotten to have this moment," Saunders, 33, posted on Instagram on Saturday, December 13, sharing rehearsal footage from The Eras Tour featuring both the dancer and the pop star. "And each year my love for you grows deeper and deeper. You are such an astounding human being!!"

He continued, "I'm honored to be in your orbit. The laughs. The love. The affirming. The care. The generosity. I just — thank you! Here's to a lifetime of more of these moments together. Happy Birthday, gorgeous!"

Swift, now 36, conceived of the Eras Tour two years before its March 2023 opening night to commemorate her professional journey. To execute her vision, she prioritized casting a diverse ensemble of dancers.

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"Spaces like space that Taylor is curating on a night-to-night basis, I wish we had more of that, even outside of entertaining," Saunders stated in Swift’s End of an Era docuseries, which premiered on Disney+ on Friday, December 12. "It’s so important to be heard, to be understood. My background as a dancer, I had a lot of dancers and professors who were not-so-kind, mostly around my size and if I wanted to be a professional dancer."

Saunders graduated from the University of Missouri-Kansas City with a degree in dance, but he assumed he would end up teaching rather than securing professional performance work. His opportunity came when he received an email about a "confidential" closed dance audition for an unannounced artist and choreographer Mandy Moore.

"I didn’t have a dollar to my name, and I called my brother, like, 'Listen, I don’t know what this is, but something is telling me I have to be in this room,'" Kam said, referring to his NFL star brother, Khalen Saunders, who paid for a plane ticket so he could attend the audition.

Kam subsequently captivated Moore, 49, with his "magnetic" personality and technical dance expertise.

"He’s a great dancer, his smile is like the thousand-watt smile," Moore shared in the Disney+ documentary. "He just embodies what I felt the spirit of what these people need to be."

Swift shared similar sentiments, revealing in a separate End of an Era interview that Kam "lights up" the stage and contributes to the "entire vibe as a tour."

At the conclusion of each leg of the tour, Swift presented Kam and the rest of the Eras cast and crew with significant bonuses.

"Bonus day is so important, because setting a precedent with The Eras Tour is really important to me, because people who work on the road, if the tour grosses more, they get more of a bonus, and these people just work so hard and they are the best at what they do," Swift explained in the documentary. "It’s fun to write the notes. It’s fun to think about everybody’s lives that they’re gonna go back to and the time off they’re gonna have and the kids they haven’t seen because they’ve been away for months, and just making that worthwhile for them is really — it feels like Christmas morning when you finally get to say thank you."

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In addition to the financial compensation, Swift provided each performer and crew member with a handwritten poem sealed with a wax emblem.

"Dearest Kam, we’ve traveled the world like we set out to do," Kam read aloud from Swift’s note in End of an Era. "We’ve dazzled the crowds but we’ve missed family too. My full gratitude doesn’t come from a bank, but here’s [redacted] dollars just to say thanks. Love, Taylor."

Swift’s Eras Tour concluded in December 2024.

The first two episodes of End of an Era are currently streaming on Disney+.