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Some of the best moments on TV wouldn’t be complete without dance. Challenged with creating movements that speak to character and story, layering a bold, physical narrative over a written one, this season’s Emmy-nominated choreographers made mesmerizing scenes come to life. We spoke to the creatives behind six of the nominees to find out how they did it.
‘Will Trent’
A woman in a red dress spins onto the club dance floor. “NUEVAYoL” by Bad Bunny plays. People line up and turn toward one another in pairs to salsa dance, then shift to breakdancing, spinning on their heads and flipping. The energy boils, and so does the tension between the woman in red and someone else competing for the same man. In a blink, she lands on the floor, breathless. The dancing stops.
This dance that opens an episode of “Will Trent,” a procedural crime show, was choreographed by Lance Guillermo and Danielle Sten, longtime choreographers for the series. This is their second nomination for “Will Trent.” This time around, they brought in Eddie Torres Jr. as their associate choreographer to add authentic Latin flair. “That was out of appreciation for the culture, for the people,” Sten said. “It didn’t feel right to take on this without the people that really speak so much of it.”
Dancers with backgrounds in all styles, including salsa, hip-hop and jazz, provided the last ingredient to the energetic scene.
‘Bridgerton’
“Bridgerton” is set in a fictionalized version of Regency England, filled with grand balls and regal social dances, and its movement is all about subtlety. Sean “Jack” Murphy has been choreographing for “Bridgerton” since the beginning, crafting the physical vocabulary of the characters. This is his second nomination for the show. “There’s a lot of etiquette, being the rules and regulations and the behavior,” Murphy said. “They then like to break rules because, if you break the rules, you get drama, you get jeopardy.” As the choreographer, Murphy helps choose the tracks that make it to the screen, deciding which songs have the right rhythm for the dance that fits at each moment in the story arc, whether it is a quadrille or a cotillion. “Each phrase, each breath is a new thought,” he said.
‘Noah’s Arc: The Movie’
A drag queen takes the stage and dancers move with her in unison. They shuffle their feet to Whitney Houston’s “Love Is a Contact Sport,” while another dancer hops on a pole and spins. It’s another day at Bootnanny’s, the fictional Los Angeles bar of “Noah’s Arc.” The show, which was the first scripted television series centered on Black gay men, started in 2005 and ran for two seasons on Logo. It returned this season with a movie that revisits the same characters, all grown up and grappling with parenthood. Choreographer Christian John-Devi Vincent, who also plays Ricky Davis in the franchise, ensured that the movement followed the growth of Alex Kirby, the drag star played by Rodney Chester. The choreography stands out for its androgyny and authenticity to the queer experience. “What you want to do is make the characters feel, for me, empowered,” he said. “You want them to feel beautiful.”
‘Wednesday’
All eyes are on Enid Sinclair (Emma Myers) and Agnes DeMille (Evie Templeton), but not for long. The dance sequence at Nevermore Academy’s Venetian Gala is part of a larger scheme for “Wednesday’s” titular character, and Agnes, who can turn invisible, plays a big role in it. In the nominated scene, choreographer Corey Baker had the exciting challenge of developing the first-ever dance routine for a then-unreleased Lady Gaga track, “The Dead Dance.”
“When you get a brand-new piece of music, as we did with ‘The Dead Dance,’ you’re creating the physical tapestry for this song for the future,” Baker said. Baker’s choreography is “a little bit off-kilter.” He juxtaposed beautiful balletic movement with eerie details, including an arm claw or a slightly tilted head. “The little touches make it feel a little bit otherworldly, or possibly even a bit ugly, and I quite like that,” he said.
MTV Video Music Awards
Robbie Blue first caught mass attention for choreographing Doechii’s Grammy Awards performance last year, for which he won an Emmy. He returns with another nomination, this time for Tate McRae’s MTV VMAs performance. “I still feel like I’m getting used to the fact that this is my job and this is what I do,” he said. This time, McRae dances in a sandpit, quickly flicking sand up with her feet as she sings “Sports Car.” The dancers pile atop one another and let the sand in their hands fall as if they are crumbling sculptures. “We knew we wanted something we could play in, whether it was a water situation, a mud situation or a sand situation,” Blue said. “It was fun to figure out what moves the sand the most, some of the things we thought were going to really work and didn’t, and once we were really in there, we were able to figure out how to make it look impactful.”
‘Wicked: One Wonderful Night’
For “Wicked: One Wonderful Night,” choreographer Christopher Scott, who also choreographed the films, had to once again reimagine the world of Oz.
“It felt like I got to honor the film and the Broadway show, and the mixed media of both worlds,” Scott said. He worked alongside associate choreographers Comfort Fedoke and Emilio Dosal to adapt the film’s movement for a smaller stage. For the film, he had to honor the exact moment in the story, but for the special he had freedom to play and consider his own relationship to the music, especially for the nominated number, “The Wizard and I.” He first choreographed with a skeleton crew, without Cynthia Erivo, and stood in her place, lip-syncing and discovering new emotions in the process.
“I got to be moved by those lyrics in a way that I couldn’t do in the film,” he said.
