Dance, at its core, is the physical expression of emotional and spiritual truths. Whether you’re dancing at a club to explore the sensuality of your body and express the joy of being alive, or you’re performing a choreographed piece that tells a profound story, dance offers a glimpse into the soul via the actions of the body. Horror often depicts characters in extreme situations and similarly provides an unusually penetrating window into a person’s psyche. When dance and horror combine, the result is a beautiful, horrifying, and illuminating vision of the ways that (predominantly female) bodies are allowed to move through the world.
Queer characters in horror often express their sexual or romantic awakenings through dance as a way to explore new, confusing, or conflicted feelings without ever speaking them aloud. In 2010’s Black Swan, Nina (Natalie Portman) is a prima ballerina dancing the lead role in Swan Lake. It’s a challenging role that requires the dancer to embody two entirely different personas — the White Swan is sweet and virginal, whereas the Black Swan is lustful and seductive — and company director Thomas (Vincent Cassel) fears that the sexually repressed Nina isn’t up to the task of dancing the uninhibited Black Swan. Another obstacle in her quest to break through her need for constant control is her abusive mother Erica (Barbara Hershey), who has never let Nina have one moment of privacy or bodily autonomy in her life. Nina, who can’t answer Thomas when he asks whether she enjoys sex, does not know her own body because she has never been allowed to think of it as being truly hers.
Frustrated with Nina’s inability to to give up control and lose herself in the heat of the dance, Thomas encourages Nina to explore her body and get in touch with her carnal side, which she does when she finds herself irresistibly drawn to Lily (Mila Kunis), a new dancer in the company. After a drug-induced hallucination convinces Nina that she and Lily had sex, Nina makes a breakthrough and taps into the sensual side of herself, dancing the Black Swan like she’s never been able to before. But by losing herself in the dance, Nina also loses herself psychologically: she can’t reconcile the two parts of herself — her mother’s “sweet girl” who does as she’s told and suppresses intense emotion, and the ambitious woman who is sexually attracted to other women.
Tormented by her fractured sense of self, Nina has a psychotic break: her hallucinations become more frequent and more disturbing, she loses weight (for which the costume designer praises her), and her tendency to self-harm via obsessive scratching gets stronger. On opening night, Nina envisions herself as a literal swan, growing feathers from her arms as she fouettés and ending with an explosive flourish of her enormous black wings. The hallucinations culminate in a bloody finale, where Nina dances with a new sense of abandon and absolute command of the audience — saying afterward, “I felt it. Perfect. It was perfect.” — right before presumably dying of a self-inflicted stab wound. Like the White Swan in the story, Nina has found freedom in suicide, the only bodily control she had left after being denied personal autonomy by an abusive mother and a professional culture that demanded far more than perfection.
Controlling mothers and queer awakenings are themes that 2018’s Suspiria is fascinated with as well. Denounced as a living embodiment of sin by her devout Mennonite mother back in Ohio, Susie (Dakota Johnson) moves to Berlin to pursue her dream as a dancer. She arrives at the dance academy as a wide-eyed innocent, hungry for new experiences and eager to escape her humble life back in the United States. She meets Sara (Mia Goth), with whom she grows quite close very quickly. Though they are never described as anything other than friends or sisters, the two women hold hands, share a bed, and exchange quick kisses on the cheek when they think no one is looking. After growing closer with Sara, Susie’s dance style becomes increasingly primal; she insists on doing more floorwork, grinding her hips suggestively and moving her shoulders as if her skeleton is trying to escape her body. She is exploring her skin in a new way, discovering a different style of dance and a new aspect of her being.
The choreography throughout the film — which features modern dance rather than ballet, as in the original Suspiria from 1977 — is expressive, forceful, and visceral. The instructors at the academy are all witches, and they use their dances as spells that exert control over both the dancers and the audience to suit the witches’ whims. Each propulsive movement and sharp breath from a dancer is a form of spellwork that steals agency from them and from those around them. Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton), who becomes a surrogate mother for Susie yet also shares some erotically charged scenes with her, uses Susie to enact a brutal punishment on fellow dancer Olga (Elena Fokina). Blanc transmits some of her power to Susie, who is treated like a poppet through which the malevolent magic flows to Olga; when Susie whips an arm around or executes a turn, Olga mimics the movement in an excruciating, bone-breaking sequence that leaves Olga twisted and bleeding on the floor. Dance is weaponized; the witches use up young women’s bodies as empty vessels stripped of agency and discard them when they’re done.
The idea of dance as a form of possession shows up repeatedly in horror. In 1988’s Night of the Demons, Angela (Amelia Kinkade) — the high school weirdo who shows no interest in boys beyond scaring them at a Halloween party — becomes host to a demonic spirit after her already-possessed friend Suzanne (Linnea Quigley) unexpectedly kisses her on the lips. Angela is shaken, but she doesn’t resist at all; she seems surprised and confused but ultimately quite receptive to Suzanne’s advances. Soon after, Angela begins a dramatic, expressive dance in the middle of the room. It is worshipful and suggestive at the same time, incorporating sensual floorwork, arm movements that sweep the room and reach out yearningly, pelvic thrusting, and turns that increase in tempo and range. Angela — or “Angela,” as it’s ambiguous how much of the dance is Angela’s doing and how much is the demon’s doing — is enjoying her body and getting increasingly comfortable taking up space, both literally and figuratively. She takes up more and more of the room as her dance continues and the demon rejoices in having a corporeal form, and she celebrates the freedom of sexual expression in the wake of her eye-opening kiss from Suzanne.
Of course, not all queer experiences involve sexual attraction. Mary (Candace Hilligoss) in Carnival of Souls (1962) is a classic queer horror character, but unlike the previously mentioned characters, she’s not overtly sapphic. Rather, the film examines her struggle as a queer woman living in a world dominated by a straight narrative, and it uses dance to highlight the disconnect Mary feels between herself and the rest of the world. After surviving a car accident caused by her friends engaging in some flirtatious drag racing with a pair of men — a flirtation that leaves Mary nonplussed and frightened — Mary begins seeing a ghoulish figure everywhere she goes. The eerie man stares intently at her and will not leave her alone. Mary is continually drawn to an abandoned carnival at the edge of town that used to be a dance hall, and when she finally explores it at the end of the film, she finds dozens of ghouls just like the man who has been stalking her. They dance stiffly, men and women paired together in a lifeless, rote dance. Terrified, Mary dissociates; she watches herself dance with the ghoul and then she sees herself become a ghoul that gives in to the dance with sunken, soulless eyes. Mary never wanted to perform an empty dance that means nothing to her; she never wanted to be paired off with a man just because that’s what society thinks should happen. She tries to run away from the haunted carnival, but the ghouls won’t let her escape…they chase her down and pounce on her. Clawed back into a life she never wanted, Mary disappears completely.
Dance and madness are often linked in horror, but the definition of madness is frequently problematic. Mental illness, especially with regard to women, is equated with desire or desperation. Few horror characters are as desperate as Eleanor (Julie Harris) from 1963’s The Haunting, another tale of repressed queerness and fraught mother-daughter relationships. Eleanor has spent her entire adult life taking care of her invalid mother, but after her mother’s death, she’s left with the realization that she has no life of her own. Joining a team of paranormal researchers at the infamous Hill House is her only chance of escape, and when the malevolent house begins to take hold of her, she stops resisting once she realizes that the haunted house is the only home she has left.
As the researchers explore the house, they come across a huge statue that resembles Hugh Crain, the builder and original owner of the house. Theo (Claire Bloom), the beautiful psychic with whom Eleanor shares some awkward romantic and sexual tension, dares Eleanor to dance with the statue. Eleanor performs an unsteady waltz around it, twirling in slow circles as she is watched by otherworldly forces. The house targets Eleanor from the beginning, since she is the most vulnerable of the group; she is an anxious woman who represses any thoughts or feelings of her own, and she has nowhere else to go. At the end of the film, as Eleanor fully succumbs to the spell of Hill House, she reprises her dance. This time, she is much steadier on her feet and more fluid as she waltzes around the statue and through the house which will soon belong to her as another spirit of Hill House. Her dance is more confident and more assured because she now has a place where she belongs; even though the house is “deranged,” Eleanor is home.
Finding a place to belong can be the greatest seduction. Dani (Florence Pugh) from Midsommar (2019) has lost everything: her sister and parents died in a horrific murder-suicide, and her resentful boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) is already halfway out the door of the relationship. When Dani tags along on a trip with Christian and his friends to a small Swedish village for their midsummer celebration, she finds a new home in the charming but deadly Hårga cult. The Hårga announce themselves as her new family: they validate her feelings, they welcome her with open arms…they even look like her.
Dani’s initiation into this new family happens during the maypole dance, an annual test of stamina that the Hårga hold to crown their new May Queen. The young women of the village dress in matching white dresses and floral crowns and dance around the maypole in rapid, flowing formations. Dani is exhausted and disoriented throughout the long dance, but she also clearly finds joy in the act of becoming a part of something bigger. She smiles more openly and more genuinely than we’ve seen from her in the entire film up to this point. She catches on quickly to the fast-changing dance steps, and at one point Dani — who only knows a few words of the native language — starts speaking fluent Swedish to another dancer without realizing it. Through the act of dancing, she has been fully assimilated into the group, adopting their language and their customs…even, as we see in the final shot of the film, taking part in their most disturbing traditions. After her initiatory dance, Dani burns her past life to the ground, embracing her new family and her new identity.
Identity is the crux of Us (2019), which stars Lupita Nyong’o in the dual roles of Adelaide, a wife and mother on vacation at the beach, and Red, her doppelgänger who appears one night and threatens Adelaide’s family. Red is one of the Tethered, a group of clones who live in tunnels below the United States whose lives are funhouse mirror versions of their above-ground counterparts. Whereas Adelaide and her family enjoy life in the sun, the existence of the Tethered is cold, painful, and grim. Adelaide stops speaking after a traumatic childhood experience at the very beach where she encounters Red as an adult, leading her parents to enroll her in ballet classes so that she will be able to “tell her story” without needing words. Just as Adelaide learns to dance, so too does Red. For every movement that young Adelaide makes on a brightly lit stage, young Red mirrors it in her cramped, dark tunnel, performing a macabre duet that highlights the stark contrast between their existences and underscores the fact that Red has no control over her own actions and no say in her own destiny.
When Red confronts Adelaide years later about the unfairness of their lives and physically threatens her, she does so by way of a disconcerting dance. Red moves in an oddly contradictory way; she is stiff but fluid, graceful but unnatural. They perform a duet as adults just as they did when they were children, with Adelaide making jerky defensive movements in response to Red’s eerily calm steps. Red is finally in control for the first time in her life: this time, Red moves and Adelaide reacts. Adelaide must fight to save herself while also facing the harsh truth that most of the good things in her life have led directly to horrible things in Red’s life. She must face herself both literally and figuratively in a complex pas de deux that leaves Adelaide and the audience questioning who is the hero, who is the villain, and who gets to define those terms in the first place.
We see common themes emerge regarding female horror characters and dance scenes. In the midst of queer awakenings, as with Nina, Susie, and Angela, the characters explore their bodies and discover new aspects of their personalities. Conversely, in repressing their queer selves — whether through internalized homophobia like Eleanor or due to societal pressures, as with Mary — they disappear completely. In the case of Eleanor and Dani, dance is an act of succumbing to madness, of giving up your own identity to become part of a larger, sinister whole. Nina and Adelaide explore the duality of their natures through dance, with Nina trying to come to terms with her repressed shadow self and Adelaide confronting her own guilt, privilege, and accountability. Sometimes, however, dance is an expression of joy and a celebration of life that filmmakers hold up in ironic juxtaposition with death.
In Peeping Tom (1960), Vivian (Moira Shearer) wants to be a star. She’s an actress and a dancer working as a stand-in on a film, and she stays after work one day to shoot an audition reel with Mark (Carl Boehm), a photographer whom the audience knows is a murderer. While Mark sets up the lighting, Vivian dances around the set to a percussive, nervy jazz tune. Shearer was an incredible dancer, and her improvisational warm-up is the definition of joie de vivre: it is vibrant and playful, combining elements of jazz and ballet into a joyful celebration of life. Part of the cruel irony of Vivian’s dance is that she is one of the few women discussed so far who is totally in control of her body and her mind while dancing, but the audience knows her fate will still be a horrific death. The entire time she’s performing her routine, she’s dancing around a prop — a trunk that director Michael Powell lingers on menacingly in an earlier shot — where the viewer knows Vivian’s murdered body will eventually be stored. She has bodily autonomy at this moment, but she’s still trapped; very soon she won’t be in control of her body or her life. The very beauty of Vivian’s dance is what makes it so horrifying, because the viewer knows that her incandescence will soon be snuffed out.
Questions of identity and autonomy recur in horror cinema’s dance scenes. Women in horror explore and express their innermost selves through dance, but they rarely do so without outside influences, whether they be supernatural forces, all-too-human murderers, or the crushing expectations and inequities of society. These beautiful, chilling, and macabre dances reveal what female characters struggle with: sexual identity, mental health, self-awareness, a sense of belonging, and physical safety in a world that seeks to control them. They want to be seen, be heard, and be understood. Though their dances are often used against them, these women create art with marginalized bodies, and in doing so they seek to reclaim their innate power.
