Is Sia using her platform to re-sensitize the public to a deep and real pain that, for too many, dulls with the quickness and oversaturation of violence in a 24/7 news cycle? Or is she being exploitative by profiting off a tragedy she didn’t experience firsthand? On top of that, it’s a pop cultural product - it exists to sell Sia’s music as much as it does to commemorate.Īnd for that, I’m here to hold Sia and Heffington accountable for the weight of the imagery they’ve put forth. It functions as an implicit memorial, an advocacy piece, a translation of true and terrible events into song and dance. I’m not here to call Sia and choreographer Ryan Heffington’s artistry or intent into question. Where in the choreography are what Chriss West described as “the good times, the laughter, the joy in people’s faces”? Why paint the Sia-universe analog of Pulse as a decrepit space from the get-go, rather than the “second home to all of us” West and other survivors say it was? Weighing Sia’s music video - confirmed by multiple dancers in it to be a tribute to the victims of the Pulse shooting - against the firsthand accounts of those who were there, I can’t shake the issue of portrayal.
#MADDIE ZIEGLER THE HOSTAGE FULL#
These kids move like zombies, faces deadpan as they toss their limbs in full abandon and perfect synchronicity all at once.Īgainst Sia’s impassioned belting, their dancing begs the question:
The choreography is sharp, staccato, aggressively stylized.
#MADDIE ZIEGLER THE HOSTAGE FREE#
I’m free to be the greatest here tonight, the greatest Maddie Ziegler does a cartwheel and, as if by the magic of her movement and Sia’s quirky-pop pep talk, the dancers get in formation. Sia’s motivational refrains play in the background - catchy platitudes about perseverance that simultaneously mean something to everyone and nothing in particular. They run amok through a dilapidated building. The first verse, in short: a rainbow-faced Maddie Ziegler coaxes the grey-faced young bodies out of the jail cell. I mean, the experience of Pulse was just one you couldn’t compare to any club in Orlando. “The excitement, the adrenaline, the drinking, the good times, the laughter, the joy in people’s faces,” West said. Pulse shooting survivor Chriss West recalled the first part the evening in an interview with CBS Orlando affiliate WKMG-TV. On Saturday, June 11, 2016, Orlando nightclub Pulse hosted its weekly Latin Night, a space where the bar’s largely LGBTQ+, Latinx crowd could, after a week’s worth of hard work and microaggressions, let loose. The young bodies begin to dance but still look many signs shy of alive.