Words by Rebeca Ravara, Writer

One of my most vivid memories from my childhood is seeing Madonna’s Hung Up music video and becoming enthralled in her expressive, brute, and provocative movements. I had largely forgotten about this memory considering most of the other music videos I encountered after this were more focused on showcasing an artist or band’s looks, or even on explicit erotic imagery (think Blurred Lines, Anaconda, etc). Before long, like many others, my focus had shifted to social media. Regardless, it seems the world of expressive and narrative-driven choreography woke up in 2023 with Jungle’s music video for Back on 74, and this movement expanded with Troye Sivan’s music video for Rush and the Calvin Klein 2024 Pride advertisement.

Choreographed by Amsterdam-based Shay Latukolan, Back on 74 is part of a larger whole of story and emotion: Latukolan himself refers to the Volcano album as a “short visual” (Vargas 2023) encompassing a single story weaved through all 14 songs. As someone inspired by film and other types of media, Shay looks to pair bodily movement with camera movement, engrossing the viewer with the dancer as much as with the song itself. Upon watching the video, there is an engagement with the camera as it idly moves in one shot slowing as the dancers slow, and moving faster as the music swells and the dancers’ movements become more abrupt. The camera itself, thus, becomes a part of the dance instead of a passive viewer.

Playing on theories of voyeurism and desire, such music videos as Blurred Lines and Anaconda place the camera and viewer as one, passively ogling over semi-naked bodies and un-ashamedly disconnecting from the song itself.

Critics have taken to comparing Latukolan’s style to that of Bob Fosse, a highly influential 20th century American choreographer who transformed an expressive and stylistic fusion of jazz, tap, and classical with such widespread hits as Chicago, All That Jazz, and Cabaret. Similarly, Latukolan focuses on such driven and brute-ish movements incorporating the entire body, albeit much later in time. However, Latukolan himself has denied this influence, placing most of his inspiration on his love of directors like Wes Anderson or Quentin Tarantino (McDonald Selznick Associates kein Datum).

Shay Latukolan is not the only choreographer bringing this more emotive style of dance back into the mainstream, as Brazilian choreographer Sergio Reis has demonstrated in both his works for Troye Sivan’s music video Rush, as well as the 2024 Calvin Klein Pride advertisement.

Reis’ choreography of the Rush music video takes the brusque and narrative-driven style of Latukolan to a certain extreme. In this video, Rush borders on the erotic appeal of older music videos as bodies are seen in close-ups, intertwining, and it includes harshness of sounds as they clash against one another, blending it with the choreography itself.

In one of the most repeated sequences of the music video, dancers are seen following through seemingly segmented moves echoing one another, albeit half naked. Through the harshness of their head banging and sharp movements, it all comes together through the dancers’ collaboration with one another; the segment itself would not appeal as such without this echoing pattern.

Additionally, Reis appeals to a LGBTQIA+ history when he incorporates moves like Vogueing in the music video. Considering Troye Sivan has connected his singles to his experience as a homosexual man, Reis connects a long-winded history of dance as sexuality, as much as dance as expression, to build the narrative that Sivan writes into the song.

Reis’ Calvin Klein Pride advertisement also furthers his link between expressionistic and narrative-driven movement with this community. This advertisement “channels the euphoric spirit of pride and the strength of the LGBTQIA+ community through expressive dance and unfiltered displays of confidence” (PVH 2024), as Calvin Klein’s company owner states. Akin to Latukolan, the bodies shown and the camera move in unison, as cast members and dancers engage their entire bodies into moving with the song itself. As most members are showing more skin, Reis interlaces this with the dance moves themselves, making them move in ways that show the muscles contracting and disengaging in a way that is visually appealing to follow.

For me, these new forms of choreography signal a return to investment on visual media. After decades spent glued to short-form videos on social media, these sorts of longer, viral videos are emblematic of a return to the enjoyment I felt as a younger kid. Seeing people recreate the choreography from these videos in the internet leads me to believe that people can still find joy and value in physical movement and engagement with music, and this makes me feel more optimistic about our creative future.

Works Cited

Vargas, Steven. 2023. Los Angeles Times. 30 August. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2023-08-30/shay-latukolans-choreography-viral-tiktok-dance-jungle-back-on-74.

McDonald Selznick Associates. n.d. Shay Latukolan Portfolio . https://msaagency.com/shay-latukolan/.

PVH. 2024. Calvin Klein launches 2024 This Is Love Pride campaign starring Cara Delevingne and Jeremy Pope . 29 May. https://www.pvh.com/news/calvin-klein-this-is-love-2024-pride-campaign.

Back on 74: a choreographed revival