Creative Profile: Ryan Heffington

Ryan Heffington has transformed the music video landscape, bringing conceptual, wonderfully expressive choreography to a mainstream audience, and making unlikely dance heroes out of reality TV stars and mainstream movie actors. David Knight follows his career moves from rad cabaret artiste to McCartney’s promo director

Two years ago, a precocious 11-year-old whirlwind in a flesh-coloured leotard, named Maddie Ziegler, smashed her way into the public consciousness and the viral video charts via her performance in the promo for camera-shy Australian singer Sia’s smash track Chandelier.

Though Ziegler’s talents, and those of director Daniel Askill (Sia herself co-directed), are undeniable, the real star of the spot was Ryan Heffington’s incredibly expressive choreography.

Post-Chandelier, Heffington’s unique style has been much in demand both for videos and commercials. He has transformed leading Hollywood actors Andrew Garfield and Shia LaBeouf into dance performers in music promos, and he’s even directed his first major video for none other than Paul McCartney.

What’s more, he has brought a conceptual, dramatic form of choreography to a mainstream audience for the first time. A style of contemporary dance, hitherto regarded as too esoteric for music videos, is now seen in promos for all kinds of artists; the latest step in choreography’s rising influence on the success of music videos in the internet age.

Not that Heffington is interested in that. “It’s what people tell me, but I have no perspective when it comes to these things,” he says, on the phone from LA. “It’s more important to other people than myself.”

The fact is, Heffington’s recent mainstream triumphs follow years of struggle, hard work, dedication and considerable success as a dancer, teacher and choreographer for dance studios and live performance.

He was something of a local LA legend even before his narrative style of choreography finally reached a mass audience. For a man renowned for making people move, he’s adept at keeping his feet on the ground. When he’s not on a film set, you will invariably find him teaching class at his own dance studio, The Sweat Spot, to all comers. “I still teach,” he confirms. “I think it’s important for me to be able to create and portray what I want with non-professional dancers – very important.”

Heffington grew up in a small town in California in the 70s and 80s. He was an enthusiastic dancer from an early age, enrolling in dance class at six and gaining a thorough education in various traditional dance forms.

After the conservative environment of his childhood, when he moved to LA on graduating from high school, he was a young gay man ready to let loose. “For the next five years it was about developing who I was,” he says. “I grew my hair down to my ass, which didn’t do me any favours in terms of getting any jobs. But it was more important to me at that point to find out who I was than work as a dancer.”

Attracted to the avant-garde, he found a soulmate in fellow dancer Bubba Carr, who was already creating wild and outrageous satirical dance shows in nightclubs. Together, Heffington and Carr would go on to establish the iconoclastic Psycho Dance Sho, regaling 90s rock club audiences with garish shock-horror dramas and bizarre drag shows.

“We were fucking and murdering each other every show,” Heffington recalls. “A lot of anger and angst came out in those pieces. Both Bubba and I grew up queer in small towns, and I think it was therapy for us. And, as we were highly trained, we gave a great show in terms of choreography and dance technique.” It was also, he says, the first time he felt like a proper choreographer.

After years creating compelling (and often very funny) dance performances in small venues, Heffington was starting to get more prestigious commissions. In 2010 he was given a three-month residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art, where he gave dance classes and created performances.

His finale was Heavy Metal Parking Lot: The Musical – based on a Judas Priest documentary. It became a major hit for the museum. “We closed down a street and 2,000 people showed up. A lot of people still talk about it when I meet them.”

The same year Heffington launched The Sweat Spot, in the LA suburb of Silver Lake, which began attracting a hip crowd and media interest. His charismatic teaching of the wonderfully-titled Sweaty Sunday classes became so popular among weekend wannabe dancers that The Huffington Post declared it “defines a Sunday afternoon in LA”.

Perhaps the most pivotal move of his career came in 2013, when Heffington devised KTCHN, a partly crowdfunded performance installation at LA’s legendary Mack Sennett studios.

Inspired by the paintings of New York artist Nolan Hendrickson, the event combined theatrical performance, fashion show, drag night and art exhibition. “Sia showed up and had the time of her life,” Heffington recalls.

The way Heffington talks about the singer being “very supportive” suggests her encouragement and collaboration have been of great significance.

Yet, when it came to making the Chandelier video a few months after their meeting at KTCHN, Heffington wasn’t actually Sia’s first choice. “She wanted to have a British choreographer, but that didn’t work out. Then she asked if I’d like to do it.” He can’t resist adding: “And the rest is history.”

Having assumed a mantle of anonymity – facing away from the camera in press shots for her album campaign – Sia needed someone to represent her in the video. She initially considered having a 70 year old in the role. “Then in the middle of the night, Sia sent me lots of photographs of Maddie, saying: ‘This is the one, she’s incredible!’” They had found their star.

Crucially, Heffington was then given freedom and time to make something unique for his performer. “I was pretty much left to create what I wanted,” he says. “I requested that we have at least three or four days before the shoot.

I wanted to create it, I wanted to work with the director to edit the movement, and also have enough time at the location. I really wanted Maddie to feel like she was attached to it and had been for her lifetime.”

The choreographer initially created the piece with an assistant, then brought in Ziegler and translated the movement to her. “It was kind of a beautiful process. It gave me time to refine the piece, and Sia was very connected to what I was creating.” However pleased he was about the creative process, he had no inkling of the reaction it would provoke. “Maddie was stunning, the directing was great, the camerawork was great – but I don’t think you ever know.” What certainly helped, he says, was the timing.

“With all these shows on TV, people are keen to explore what dance is. It was the perfect time to release something like Chandelier.”

It was quickly followed by a video for Arcade Fire’s We Exist, directed by British director David Wilson and starring The Amazing Spider-Man’s Andrew Garfield as a character struggling with gender identity, set in the dangerous locale of a redneck bar.

Heffington’s choreography reflects Garfield’s character’s emotional voyage, transforming violence and prejudice into a fantasy of triumphant, joyful self-expression and acceptance through dance.

“I’m fortunate that my work is narrative-driven and high concept, even if it’s just in the emotional realm of these subjects,” Heffington says. “I love creating a mood, a philosophy.”

That could be the reason that Heffington’s choreography seems the most important element of many of the projects he has worked on. From Hiro Murai’s video for Chet Faker’s Gold – where he created a memorable routine for three girls skating in the dead of a desert night; to Kahlil Joseph’s eerie, death row-themed video for FKA twigs’ Video Girl; to Vincent Haycock’s intense series of videos – shot over a couple of months last year in Mexico, LA, London and the Scottish Highlands – for Florence + the Machine.

His strange, intense and emotional choreography was certainly at the forefront of his next collaboration with Sia, on the promo for Elastic Heart, at the end of 2014. It was a reunion not only with the singer and their young dancer muse Ziegler, but also with Hollywood-actor-turned-avant-garde-artist Shia LaBeouf. Heffington had worked with the star on

the low-budget, Alma Har’el-directed video for Sigur Rós’s Fjögur Píanó a couple of years before. Then, their collaboration resulted in the video becoming the top result in a search for ‘Shia LaBeouf naked’; their work on Elastic Heart resulted in the perhaps preferable distinction of Best Choreography prize at last year’s UK Music Video Awards.

It was a searing performance by LaBeouf, as he and Ziegler danced out their dysfunctional yet codependent relationship – considered controversial by some, considering their age disparity – in and around what looked like a huge bird cage.

“Shia is game for anything in terms of movement and direction, and that is what makes him a brilliant actor,” says Heffington, adding that the film was a good example of narrative and role-playing in dance being in the eye of the beholder. “Sia had her concept of the characters, and we had different opinions at some points,” he says. “But it still works. We’re allowed to have different opinions.”

This doesn’t mean Heffington isn’t an assertive presence both in casting and on set – he sees his work as much more than just the choreography. “I don’t expect my team to figure it out in terms of angles and pace. I’m very loud in communicating why I choreographed a certain move, from where the camera is shooting it.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, this forthrightness has led to a move to directing. The opportunity came when Heffington was working on two Florence + the Machine videos in the Scottish Highlands last year.

He started talking to executive producer Paul McKee – who also acts as Paul McCartney’s video commissioner. After a few days’ discussion about potential directors for the project – a new remix of Say Say Say, McCartney’s early 80s duet with Michael Jackson – and the brief for the video, which Heffington did not like, McKee asked the choreographer if he would be interested in directing the video himself. “Before thinking about it I said ‘Yes’,” he recalls. “I got nervous later.”

The result is an exuberant celebration of dance on the streets of Los Angeles, following a young man as he moves through the city having various encounters and adventures.

Heffington reveals that the concept changed during the course of the production, and ultimately McCartney was willing to back him with an additional shoot day so that the final video is packed with dance from start to finish.

Heffington says he learned a great deal from the experience. “My crash course was very quick, very informative, and I think I pulled it off.” But there is also no chance that he will now prioritise directing over choreography. “I’ve learned not to push for things. An opportunity will arise, like the McCartney thing, and I’ll take it. But I also love being the choreographer on set.”

And the projects just keep on coming, commercials as well as videos. After providing the movements for a dancing baby in Geremy & Georgie’s latest Evian commercial, he’s recently been working with Spike Jonze on what he will only describe as a “groundbreaking” new ad.

He also kicked off 2016 by choreographing the new Hiro Murai-directed video for Massive Attack’s Take It There – featuring actor John Hawkes stumbling through city streets at night, dancing with his own personal demons.

Then there are the movie projects. At the end of last year he completed work on Christopher Guest’s new feature, Mascots, which he describes as “a dream job – I’m such a huge fan.” Heffington started 2016 working on the new film from Edgar Wright (Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz). All of a sudden, he’s back working in an area that has often featured in his live projects, but rarely on film so far: comedy.

But no matter how many projects he has on the go, Ryan Heffington will no doubt still find time to help the wannabes down at The Sweat Spot. It’s in his DNA. “I love commercial work and I can share it with the world, but there’s something about the intimacy of performance that cannot be recreated to film, and I absolutely love that feeling.”