Watch Adelaide and Red’s Previously Unreleased Full Dance Sequence from “Us”
[Light spoilers for Us ahead.] Jordan Peele’s bonkers/genius horror film Us uses dance in a terrifyingly effective way: Peele intercuts the big final fight scene with snippets of teenage Adelaide and her Tethered doppelgänger, Red, performing to music from The Nutcracker (specifically, the andante from the Sugar Plum Fairy’s pas de deux). As choreographed by Madeline Hollander and danced by Ashley McKoy, the twisted ballet is chilling—even when seen in chopped-up bits.
But now Us is out on DVD and available on demand, and fans have been offered the complete version of Hollander’s choreo as a bonus feature. Take a look:
“The choreography in the scene is a hybrid, fusing together the Sugar Plum and Cavalier from [choreographer George] Balanchine’s traditional Nutcracker into one solo,” Hollander told Art News. “It’s both the male and female parts in one dance, and then completely distorted and inverted, almost puppeteered, as if the dancer on the top, in the theater, was dragging around the dancer below via a magnet, through the ceiling.” Spooky!