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Their 2002 do-it-yourself video “A Million Ways”- in which the band members, clearly not trained dancers, did a tongue-in-cheek routine in Mr.
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Sie has choreographed for the band OK Go (her brother, Damian Kulash, is the lead singer) have page views in the tens of millions. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.
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These are not the sorts of artists who normally make music videos. Marshall has been honored with a MacArthur grant. The thrashing guitar music is by David Lang, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer. The gestures are a bit less sexualized, closer to the Supremes than to strippers, and the music, rather than the cheerleader chant of Beyoncé’s song, is guitar and drums.īut the differences go deeper.
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The choreographic structure is a little more complex, with more counterpoint, less unison. In “Stop,” there are two equal dancers, rather than a star flanked by two look-alikes. The similarities are intentional, as are the differences. It is “Stop,” by the choreographer Susan Marshall. It is not Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies,” probably the most famous dance video of this century. It consists entirely of women dancing in high heels, wearing identical, flesh-hugging outfits that expose their upper thighs.
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