Movement Choreography
for Nosferatu: releases 2024/5)

PRESS QUOTES AND LINKS MENTIONING MOVEMENT CHOREOGRAPHY FOR NOSFERATU

PRESS VIDEOS MENTIONING MOVEMENT CHOREOGRAPHY FOR NOSFERATU

https://www.focusfeatures.com/nosferatu

Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu is a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman and the terrifying vampire infatuated with her, causing untold horror in its wake.

STARRING

Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Emma Corrin, Willem Dafoe, Simon McBurney, Ralph Ineson

DIRECTED BY

Robert Eggers

WARNING -POTENTIAL FILM SPOILERS AHEAD.

Research Process

I previously worked with Robert Eggers on The Northman (2022) where my main choreography was for The Beserkers, so I completely understood the incredible detail and rigour with which Robert works. For Nosferatu, my main research tool was in fact my own body and its own choreographic history.

My Movement Choreography for the language of Nosferatu draws up my idiosyncratic and original choreographic approach developed over 30 years of creating work and evident in my solo works such as Mythic and Black Mirror . I have done prior research into possession, hysteria, human and animal hybrids, the Occult and Witchcraft and I am absolutely fascinated with transformation and how the body, and body and costume in particular, can allow the performer to find the more than human or the un-human. Many of my solo works explore female archetypes through mythical figures and revolve around questions relating to spirtuality and sexuality. In Mythic I explored the notion that the dead can live on in us as a trace or ghost. I was thus really honoured and excited to work with Robert on his unique vision and am certainly at home in this material.

Nosferatu and Butoh

I have studied Butoh for over 30 years and am one of the very first European artists to receive Arts Council funding for this type of work in the UK and take this approach into mainstream dance and theatre contexts and actor/dance training in UK Universities. The ideas and approach of Butoh are deeply imprinted in my approach to movement choreography. My work with Butoh is very different in many ways from other Butoh artists in that I am situated as a Western Choreographer and my work draws upon legacies of other movement practices (such as somatics and Performance Art) and is also heavily informed by my training as a Fine Art painter.

Butoh is the absolutely perfect language for Nosferatu. The Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata is quoted as saying such things as, 'We shake hands with the dead' or 'Butoh is a corpse standing upright in a desperate bid for life'. What he meant, is that in Butoh we go beyond the notion of self, attempt to shed the daily or socially and culturally constructed body, and try to access other states of being, including allowing the body to be a vessel for other entities; such entities could be air, wind, birds, animals but also ghosts, demons; in fact the body, when open, can transform and mutate into anything. At the heart of Butoh is a 'radical reversal of aesthetic consciousness' (Kuniyoshi) and an embrace of a 'wabi-sabi' kind of beauty, the ugly, the chthonic, death, the tie to the 'bowels of the earth' but at the same time an embrace of the 'transcendent' becoming nothing, disappearing and extending into another concept of body and space/time. Hijikata and Ohno both have quite different 'spiritual' approaches but my own way has been to start with the specificity of the material body in search of the immaterial and have found these to be both inextricably bound.

The Butoh dancer trains to become receptive to poetic images and impulses, allowing the mover 'to be moved, rather than move'. The Butoh dancer uses methods to surrender conscious control and to feel that they are 'danced rather than dance'. Or another way to say the same thing, is that in Butoh we take a 'step within', implying that it is not about mastering external 'dance steps' but about surrendering to an internal process of moving 'like magma' (Iwana). The skilled Butoh dancer will actualise that the space inside the body and the space outside the body become similar; a process of encountering MA.

There is a resonant relationship, I assert, between the Butoh body being moved by unseen forces and being possessed by various entities and the unseen forces that move Ellen and Orlok in the narrative. Nosferatu mainly demanded the actors encounter their own darkness or shadow and Butoh was just one way to do that.

Ellen in the narrative is open to spiritual 'mediumship' as she is a sonambulist. Unfortunately, she conjures a malevolent force that becomes all consuming. It is only through her own agency that this force can be appeased and conquered. In many ways the text is a story about a woman living in a repressive society who finds her own way to not only encounter the spiritual realm, but also find ways to channel her culturally forbidden 'dark desires' but at same time becomes meshed in a destructive 'demonic lover' fate. There are echoes of abuse, of toxic and malevolent control and love resonating in the opening shots of the film and at the closing shots of 'death and the maiden' and Robert's conscious vision of the inextricable fusion of sex and death.

Butoh is sometimes called 'Dance of Darkness' (Ankoku Butoh) which is a term used in its inception and refers specifically to the work of founder Tatsumi Hijikata. Hijikata was specifically interested in eroticism, the taboo and darkness. Butoh plays with all of existence, darkness and shadow, the comic and light, love and death and my work and approach draws upon a lineage from both Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno.

Butoh is not considered 'traditional' but in its inception mid 1950's was an 'avant-garde' open philosophy towards the body and movement, both rejecting but also building from ideas and aesthetics within the legacy of Japan. This includes some influences from Noh Theatre, which in turn traces back to ancient Shinto and Buddhist thinking around Kami (numinous spirits), and then later, hungry ghosts who need appeasing and come back for revenge or wander the earth. The connection for Nosferatu is very clear, as the dead/undead Orlok comes back and exists in a liminal space, doomed to eternal return.

Butoh also has strong origin links with the German Expressionism of Mary Wigman, and Harold Kreutzberg and the Japanese import of their ideas via Takaya Egushi and Baku Ishii. The original Murnau version of Nosferatu (1922) was created alongside the Expressionist movement, although eschews these visual and movement languages, aside from the expressionist use of shadows and the mannerisms of the vampires movements. I held back from applying any discernible Expressionist language to the movement (although the opening movement has some stylization that echoes back to Expressionism).

What mattered in Robert Eggers version was a root in naturalism and to believe in the movement, and to find what I in fact prefer to call not even Butoh but 'psychophysical gesture': the Actors movements already have an emotional response within. For example, with Lily, I worked a lot with shaking, expresssive breathing, stylized eye and face contortions, as the body can then do a lot of the emotional 'heavy lifting 'of the actors work. The movement is, of course, still demanding and requires total immersion on the part of the actor. I firmly believe that actors can do this and still step out of their role, and be 'themselves' and then return to the scene, knowing the body will remember and do the work.

Initial Process

Robert contacted me quite some time before the filming commenced, as is well know, the film got delayed due to cast changes. We exchanged ideas via email, and he sent lots of diverse links to inspirational films. Often the links will seem contradictory from a movement perspective, but I usually intuit what Robert is searching for.

I work very closely with Robert's script and the very detailed and exquisite storyboard images by Adam Pescott which give the frame, distance, direction of camera and continuity. Jarin Blaschke (cinematographer) and Robert have a meticulous shot planning process. From this, I then start to imagine and construct the physical material.

As much of my work on this film was with the principal cast, I did not need to work with other dancers or an assistant on this occasion and did all the preparatory work on my own body. This early stage is always quite a scary process as I am never sure if I am on the right direction and have to trust my instincts and my experience. Knowing that Robert had wanted to make this film since he was a child created even more of a responsibility and drive to get everything perfect.

In Rehearsal at Barrandov Studios in Prague

Lily Rose Depp

My main work was with Lily Rose Depp, who I discovered is an incredibly hardworking, talented and capable physical performer. I worked with her on;

The opening scene where as a young girl, she invokes the demon, and she is lying on the ground and then convulses.
all the rising from bed and sleepwalking/ sonambulist scenes inside and outside, to instil a 'floating' and ethereal quality in the movement.
the restraining scenes on the bed in a corset, with the doctors manhandling her as she convulses.
the possession ('exorcism') scene on the bed, with Professor Von Franz (Willem Dafoe).
the scene on the shoreline when she is in the water invoking a kind of erotic madness.
the scene in the living room with her husband where she demolishes the furniture and turns truly possessed with uncontrolled shaking and strong use of face and eyes.
the final scene between Orlok and Lily on the 'death bed' is also highly choreographed.

My process with Lily would be to either transmit choreographic sequences prepared on my own body, and then adapt them to her body. Or, I would shape material directly on her body, particularly for what the press are calling the 'exorcist' sequence.

With Lily, there were quite a number of possession sequences, so we had to be careful not to peak to early in the film, and with a reading of the script, the movement material was shaped so each one had a different temperature or colour; some possessed, some erotic and some innocent.

1) The opening sequence.

This was the most choreographed and was made on my body and then transposed to Lily in rehearsal. Incidentally this was the very last scene that was filmed with Lily on set.

2) The sleepwalking

we worked on floating, slow movements partly informed by suri-ashe, but I also created a simple poetic image score to induce stillness.

3) The restraining scene where she is held down by Sivers and Harding; This was fairly straightforward and I has to work with the existing camera frame and just encouraged a more forceful and aggressive energy for the men; the costume was very useful here and we could make a feature of the self-tying corset. For Lily I drew upon a specific Charcot hysteria image for the bent arm position in this shot (see gallery below).

4) The Possession sequence with Von Franz

This sequence in fact came very quickly in mainly one rehearsal, as I had in mind very clearly some of the images from Charcot's studies of Hysteria, which both Robert and I identified simultaneously as a great source of inspiration. My main concern with this kind of extreme movement is the physical toll of the repetition of takes needed in front of the camera, but Lily was totally up for doing this all herself and no CGI or Stunt double was used. Apparently, some viewers have suggested CGI was used. I can confirm that what you see in the film - Lily did EVERYTHING herself. Which is why we kept the movement 'believable'. She is not floating up mid air, or climbing walls or going downstairs backwards! The press comparisons with The Exorcist are a bit lazy, obvious and not accurate, and the film that Robert and I both referred to early on is Il Demonio (1963) with the actress Daliah Lavi doing the extraordinary crab walk. This, along with the images of hysteria, were the initial starting points, and then I was also was inspired by the late French artist Louise Borgeois sculptures of the 'arch of hysteria'.

5) In the Water: this was really challenging for Lily as the water was freezing, so there were limited takes; the mood of this was possessed/erotic and we just rehearsed a more abandoned and looser physicality for this scene.

6 )The Possession scene in the living room with Hutter.

For the living room scene between Ellen and her husband (played by Nicholas Hoult), this material took quite a few rehearsals to clarify as it is an extremely complex scene and needed to be filmed in one take. I worked closely with Lily on this and we read through the script together and mapped out a plan or 'transformation physical score' for the scene. We even went onto the half-constructed set weeks before and walked through where everything was anticipated to be in terms of furniture and props. I made sure to work out how furniture/props might be thrown and in what manner. I also ensured we worked in a mock up of the costume so that Lily could practice destroying and ripping the dress prior to doing it in the actual scene.

It is these kind of preparatory details that allow an actor to then focus on the flow of their performance without having any sudden surprises on set.

Choreographically, I had prepared a very demanding 'bodily shaking' for this scene, as it conjured images of both bodily pain, anger, affliction and possession. This worked really well, although Lily did understandably find this aspect very exhausting, but by the time of filming, after much rehearsal, she does this so convincingly as part of her 'transformation physical score.'

The other influence on this scene spoken about in the press is that of the exquisite actress Isabelle Adjani in Possession (1981). We all referred to Adjani in preparation for this one scene, as it is inevitable. She set the gold standard for this kind of physical acting!

What I took inspiration from with Adjani was the centrality of breathing patterns in relation to manifesting a body transformation. Otherwise, our own movement material takes a very different trajectory, which is based more on physical tension and a retained solid axis of the body, rather than physical release and axial loss of control seen in Adjani. Adjani also had no text to deliver and had several very long minutes, whereas Lily has to contend with a scene partner, text delivery and quite big behavioural jumps in a very short time frame. In this sense, the motivation and structure of our material for this particular living room scene is actually very different.

The Unexpected as part of the process

Despite all our rehearsals, the unexpected did happen and the floor material that was initially choreographed for this scene had to be changed a the very last minute, as we all discovered that the mixture of the proposed camera angle with the voluminous dress did not work at all favourably. Robert has already described in the press how we both then went into a very sleepless night. I rehearsed material late into the night in the gym in the hotel (fortunately there were no gym people to scare!) and Robert and I sent each other emails with proposed ideas for alternative material. I had prepared a 'menu' of options, many of them felt too choreographic or expressionist and more suited to my body, but what did work was a proposed new focus on the face and classic images of butoh faces such as Yoko Ashikawa, were referred too. The scene of Lily/Ellen with the white eyes, the strange distorted face and extended, possessed tongue is probably the most 'recognizable' Butoh element in the scene, and is shocking, although for me, the shaking and convulsing are possibly more terrifying and where Lily truly taps into the Butoh desire to 'be moved rather than move'.

Fortunately on the day of shooting, we had plenty of time to block the scene and rehearse with Lily. She does an absolutely outstanding job of bringing together all the physical score and all the transformations demanded of this whole scene, which is testament to her hard work, and commendable skill as an actress. She has to shift quickly from tormented, to demonic to erotic in a short timeframe and in a single take! This is extraordinarily difficult material to do and she does it so emotionally raw and beautifully. Give her an award please!!

7)Transformations of the Death Scene (Bill/Orlock and Lily/Ellen)

The sequence that in fact took the a lot of rehearsing, thinking, movement choreography and crafting work was the 'death scene' between Orlok and Ellen. Originally, Rob had wanted Orlok to die alone and fall out of frame onto Ellen. After rehearsing on several occasions alone with Bill , although the material had potential, we all felt something else was needed. Thankfully I reminded Rob of his original exquisite version of another script ending to draw upon. In that script ending, which was an earlier draft, it described something closer to a duet of death. In front of the camera, this final scene continually took a lot of work, mainly technical with extremely tight camera angles and lighting. It was well worth the huge effort and I am very proud of the movement choreography contributions for this scene. It pushes Rob's original narrative in an eerily beautiful and highly emotional direction. Rob, Lily and Bill and I, have all shed light, in various interviews on that final scene. What is great about the ending is that it does lend itself to different readings, which is the beauty of film, as poetry.

Other Scenes in the Film.

Bill Skarsgard

On arrival in Prague I initially worked a lot with Bill Skarsgard and both Robert and I had anticipated this would be my main work on the film. We explored the slow walk of butoh (suri-ashe) a walk that hovers on the margins between life and death, and a walk that aimed to find the walk of the undead/dead. We found some great physical material, but then once he put on the costume and prosthetics, we all realised that the movement had to be stripped right back. The monster was conjured through make up and costume and Bills extraordinary ability to become the character.

I helped pull together the Roma Dance movement, working together with Crowds Directors, and also had a light touch on some scenes in a hospital. I very briefly assisted Emma Corrin with prep for her convulsions with the rats.

There is a conception. that the movement choreographer just turns up with material and transposes into on the actors body. This is just not possible, or desirable, as the actors will have their own internal narratives, images, physical aptitudes and ideas. I had the trust of the actors and Eggers to allow this dialogue process to unfold and many revisions and versions were explored until we arrived at the best material for each scene, accommodating camera angles, script continuity, set locations, costume, and so on. There is always also the balance to be found between too much choreography, too much control, or conversely not enough structure and we had to constantly find the right balance to each scene. I think when working with such idiosyncratic 'invented' movement scoring, this is always going to be the best process to follow.

It has been an honour of a lifetime to work on this film and I am so pleased for Robert that the film has had such an incredible positive response. I also really hope Lily Rose gets some very well deserved award recognition.

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Movement Choreography for Nosferatu: releases 2024/5)

Movement Choreography
for Nosferatu: releases 2024/5)