Chances are your high school prom didn’t look as gorgeous as this. For the latest visual from their most recent album Sleep Well Beast, The National have apparently decided to evoke memories of Homecoming dances through time immemorial in their video for the track “Dark Side Of The Gym.” Set within, where else, but a gymnasium festooned with balloons, two dancers come into focus wrapping themselves around one another with deft, deliberate, but whimsical movements, while the voice of Matt Berninger croons away, asking to “keep you in love with me for a while” in the background.
The film was directed by Justin Peck, one of the premier dance choreographers in the world today. In an interview with The New Yorker he described how he and his partner Patricia Delgado came to work together on this project. “I’ve choreographed for Patricia before, and obviously, we have a very close relationship, but, before this, we never had any excuse to dance together.”
The most poignant moment of the film comes near the end when Delgado stares straight into the camera, never shifting her focus. “We decided that Pat could tell the whole story in thirty seconds, just by looking into the camera,” producer Ezra Hurwitz explained.
You can watch the “Dark Side Of The Gym” video above.
