Once it finally came time to shoot the dancers, who had worked with choreographer Deena Thomsen, Gehrig said her job simply became to direct as little as possible and let the music move the dancers.
“When we came to this, it was a very honest process between me, the choreographer and the dancers. We started with some improv with each dance and how connect to the music,” she said.
‘I didn’t have to direct’
“With Maya, [the youngest dancer], she comes at the world with a kind of naivety. Nothing’s gone wrong yet,” Gehrig explained. “She came at this piece of music with an innocence and playfulness. So, Deena worked with her on coming up with a combination of moves that was silly and spoke to a young mind.
“Then the music crossed into the heavy metal and into trenches, the more emotional stuff. [The second dancer], Tyra, had three spaces to occupy. She took on that teenage rage—the lashing out and finding yourself—and [transitioned into] finding herself in her own body and getting lost in the moment of her early 20s,” she continued.
“Then Niara [took the space] from 27 through to early 50s. She was [to convey]: ‘I'm not looking ahead, I'm not looking back … But then she stays in the party too long. She’s left there when all her friends have moved on. That was the brief we gave to ourselves, because at some point in your life, shit goes down and she has it embody that moment,” Gehrig said of the climax of the spot.
“Finally it goes back into rebuilding yourself and actually realizing that life is short and you have to live every moment, which then takes us to a quick moment with Paula with her chair and a spin into Karen, who expressed herself through movement about how she felt about life in this moment. Her brief was the transition between embracing the end of life and actually leaving life.”
“I didn’t have to direct,” Gehrig concluded. “I just had to provide an environment where they felt comfortable. My direction in this was to be absent as much as possible to give them the space to be to respond to the music in the most elegant way.”