Sia – Chandelier

I imagine by now you are pretty tired of hearing this song. It soared through the charts for good reason. The tune is catchy but the video… Boy, this video. I stared at it gaping the first time I watched it because 1) what the heck was this kid doing?? and 2) how the heck can she do that??

When I read an article where the choreographer said he wanted to film a little girl playing around a house I thought well that’s a bit of a bleak place for a girl to be playing… It didn’t even look like playing to me, at first.
The more I watched it the more I could see it, though and how talented that kid is. She, and the choreography, are very expressive, and I cannot seem to get tired of watching this.

Video description from Wikipedia:

The music video for “Chandelier” was released on 6 May 2014. It features Maddie Ziegler, a young dancer.[52] Ziegler was personally asked by Sia to appear in the video via Twitter.[53] The video was directed by Sia and Daniel Askill,[54] and was choreographed by Ryan Heffington.[55] Ziegler shared her thoughts about the dance moves to New York magazine:[53]

“I like the whole dance. It was really different and weird for me, because I usually don’t, you know, be a crazy person every time. It was so fun to do and it was really out of the box and it expanded me a lot, because I’m used to competition dances where you’re like, ‘Point your legs!’ But this time it was like, you just need to let go and feel it.”

In the video, Ziegler wears a blonde Sia wig. Throughout the clip, Ziegler dances in a deserted apartment “while spinning, kicking, leaping, crawling, falling, twirling and hiding herself behind window drapes”.[54] An alternative one-take version of the clip was released in June 2014.[56] The choreography was praised by media outlets; an editor from The Guardian wrote that Ziegler “dances with such impressive flexibility”.[56] Nolan Feenay from Time magazine commented that the dance moves in the “Chandelier” music video could be the best dance routine of 2014.[57] “Chandelier” received nominations at the MTV Video Music Awards for Video of the Year and Best Choreography, and ultimately won the latter.[58][59] On 5 December 2014, it was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Music Video.[1] The video went viral on YouTube and became the seventh most-watched video on the video-sharing website of 2014.[60][61] As of January 2015, Billboard ranked the video at number 12, on the list of the 20 best of the 2010s (so far).[62]