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The Perfect Storm

When is a music video also a dance film? This is a question that I’ve often asked myself as a result of the propensity amongst curators, speakers, museums, arts institutions and more to sort, arrange, label, and otherwise categorize works that contribute to popular arts and culture. With dance in particular there are times where I feel that even labeling work as classical, contemporary, commercial, or otherwise is at once too little and too much information. The thought that I keep arriving at is that I’m not sure that it serves anyone to categorize at all.  

Performance

Gener8ion - Storm directed by Romain Gavras and choreographed by Damian Jalet

Place

Words

Sarah Elgart

Still from “Gener8ion - Storm” directed by Romain Gavras and choreographed by Damian Jalet

Case in point, the dance film Gener8ion - Storm, starring Yung Leon. At first look, this seven and a half minute short presents as a hugely ambitious music video, but as it unfolds you realize it is much more. The film opens with no music, the sound of echoing footsteps, and a black title card reading “Leeds, United Kingdom, 2034.” Soon after we are introduced to the overhead visual of dozens of suited men sprawled out and laying still on the floor. Another man, sans suit jacket, walks into the room, his footsteps the source of the echo. Walking in amongst them the bodies slowly stretch. As the camera pushes into a close up of the man, we see tattoos peeking beneath his collar line and around the corners of his white button down shirt. His expression and carriage suggest something menacing. 

He stands like he owns the room, tokes a cigarette, then exhales contemplatively. Slowly, a beat picks up, and we follow and watch him—now clearly the school bully—as he terrorizes other students into moronic dares, pulls pranks, destroys school property, menaces, and generally incites chaos and fear amongst less self assured students and their cohorts for a good deal of the film. In one scene, he walks into a room and yells at everyone to “Shut the F**k Up!” and the film goes silent—stepping momentarily out of the reality the film is creating, which I love. Soon after we finally see the men who were laying on the floor now standing and moving, the chaos and rabble rousing pauses when the Bully sinks, apparently high, into tall weeds, Finally, the film cuts to show Bully Man with the entire “Storm class of 2034” now standing on bleachers sans suit jackets where the bulk of the choreography occurs.

Still from “Gener8ion - Storm” directed by Romain Gavras and choreographed by Damian Jalet

Still from “Gener8ion - Storm” directed by Romain Gavras and choreographed by Damian Jalet

Gener8ion - Storm is directed by Romain Gavras, with choreography by the remarkable Damien Jalet, who seems to be everywhere these days. Jalet is famous for exploring trance-like rituals, and having groups of dancers surrender to a collective rhythm. The main movement is a melange of gestures, largely from the waist up: arms and hands circle heads, that move one way then another in beautifully patterned and cannoned sequences which the camera captures perfectly, and which ultimately acts as a resolution of the story through movement. 

If you read some of the nearly 10,000 Youtube comments, every other one seems to be about the choreography or the dancers. And there is something so deliciously satisfying in seeing chaos resolve through unison and patterned movements. It evokes community, solidarity, and release. It gives us, the viewers, hope, satisfies our hunger, scratches an itch, and for a moment, chaos ends and the world unites. Enjoy.

Sarah Elgart


Sarah Elgart is an award winning choreographer, director, movement director, and producer, creating original content for stage, site and screen, whose work has been seen internationally. Sarah’s ScreenDance Diaries is one of the first articles on the genre of Dance Film (originally for Cultural Daily). An alumna of the Sundance Institute’s Dance/Film Lab, AFI’s DWW, and a director member of the DGA, Sarah is the founder and director of Dare to Dance in Public Film Festival. 

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