Watch Sia’s Choreographer Decode The “Chandelier” Dance
“Cockroach, up the wall, clean your moustache, POSSUM!”
The massive success of Sia's "Chandelier" must at least partially be attributed the music video's choreography. The transformative sequence lent the video a heft not usually found in pop music visuals. It made its executor, Dance Mom's Maddy Ziegler, seem tormented and wise beyond her 11 years, and it made "Chandelier" feel intimate and confessional: a whispered secret, not a radio-ready ballad with 643 million plus plays. Nowness has kindly introduced us to Ryan Heffington, the 42-year-old avant-garde choreographer responsible not just for Sia and Maddy Ziegler's video trilogy, but FKA Twigs' Google Glass film and Arcade Fire's "We Exist." Dressed in loose separates with a waxed moustache and man-bun, Heffington walks us through Ziegler's dance step-by-step, honing in on the more obscure movements and creating a completely new and fascinating narrative in the process.
