One man seems to be shaping the steps of pop’s vanguard. Atlanta-based choreographer Sean Bankhead has gone from viral YouTube star to trusted associate of Missy Elliott, Doja Cat, and more. In 2019, Bankhead collaborated with Normani on the video for her breakout single “Motivation.” The singer’s hyper-athletic dance routine—complete with an expertly timed, booty-bounced basketball—made Bankhead a household name. In the past few months, his inspired, agile choreo seems to be everywhere. Megan Thee Stallion and Cardi B’s saucy “WAP” performance at this year’s Grammys? That was Bankhead. Lil Nas X and his bevy of naked inmates? They’re strutting out Bankhead’s footwork, too.
Earlier this month, Normani released “Wild Side,” which boasts a feature from Cardi B and a dramatic video packed with Bankhead’s choreography. Directed by Tanu Muino, who helmed Lil Nas X’s magnificent “Montero (Call Me by Your Name),” the “Wild Side” clip is a visual feast: Normani floats through the ceiling, glides across the floor, and dances with a doppelganger, twisting and turning like a perfectly mirrored image. The structural sets, special effects, and dazzling costume changes were all integral to Normani’s vision, says Bankhead—but they also made the choreography more of a feat.
Bankhead was up against splitting seams, stifling leather pants, and pesky harness wires. Oh, and he also had to conceal Cardi B’s pregnant belly as she danced. In the nude. “Every scene had challenges, to be honest,” Bankhead said recently over the phone. “They all needed to be worked out and thought through pertaining to the choreography first.”
Pitchfork: You’ve been collaborating with Normani for a couple of years now—what is your working relationship with her like?
Sean Bankhead: I’ve always admired artists who had a really good connection with their choreographer, whether it was Janet Jackson and Tina Landon, Fatima [Robinson] and Aaliyah, or Brian Friedman and Britney Spears. I was always like, “Oh, I would love to have an artist that I could just do whatever with and be great and make these videos and do these live performances.” What’s so interesting about Normani is that, slowly but surely I started realizing that we connected so much that I felt like this [dream] was coming to fruition for me. We’ve been working so long together and have formed this bond and this trust, we push each other to do something crazier than the last time.
I’m most proud of this video out of my entire career. This was finally an opportunity to work with an artist who completely trusts me, who’s new. Like when I work with Missy, we know what Missy wants, we know what Missy delivers, but when I get to work with Normani we get to completely create a new lane.
At one point in the video Normani magically slides across the floor. How was that done? Is she on a conveyor belt?
One of the biggest ideas that we had for this video was to keep defying the laws of gravity or do a lot of eye-fucking, like: “Hold on, how are they doing that?” Or, “How the fuck is she dancing with herself?” So that sliding scene started in rehearsals when I literally had her kneeling on a towel and I was just pulling her on the floor and we were like, “Huh, this could be really interesting.” And so we last-minute hired three males because we felt like it would be so cool if her sliding was juxtaposed against guys moving and jumping over her, so it looked really easy. Like she was just slithering like a snake.
We actually had her in a harness and there was a wire pulling her on her knees and her hands. And that’s the thing that I really admire about Normani: she just goes for it. She’s down for literally whatever. She’s like, “All right, Sean, let’s do it. I can’t feel my knees, there’s no more skin on them, my hands are blistered, but anything for the shot.” That harness and that wiring was so tricky to pull off with her wardrobe, because of course she wanted to wear a miniskirt in that scene. That’s actually one of my favorite moments that I’ve ever been able to choreograph for an artist.
Was there a stand-in for the scene where she dances with herself?
That was a body double. One of my great dancers that’s been dancing with Normani for a couple of years now, her name is Joya Jackson. I was a big fan of this choreographer Mackenzie Dustman and she does this really avant-garde twisting, interlocking body stuff, and I was like, “I think if we can bring her in to collaborate on this scene and make it look like you’re dancing with yourself, that’s another way we can mind-fuck the audience.” But of course being as ambitious as we are, not only did [Normani] have to learn the choreography one way, she had to learn the complete opposite of it and perform it multiple times on set so that we could keep shooting the camera left and right to make it look like she was dancing with herself.
Me and Normani were so scared a day before the video dropped because that scene wasn’t right. It was that moment of us not being able to get that special effect right. It looked so bad and we were like, “Oh my God, this whole entire video is going to crash and burn. We hate it.” It sucks because you work on something so much and then you get overly analytical when you’re editing that you almost stop looking at it for something that’s good. You’re more so looking for all the critiques and all the problems. We ended up taking out and re-editing that scene the day before, so that it showed less of Joya’s face. It was down to the wire with this video.
Normani has talked about how her mom’s recent struggle with breast cancer really drove her to release this single and video. Was that something that was kept in mind during the creative process?
Normani and her mother are family to me, and I’ve known them for going on six, seven years now. This whole project was supposed to happen a year ago, I think even before the pandemic, and unfortunately, her mother’s cancer came back, so she had to put everything on pause. It kind of breaks my heart because I know how passionate [she is] and how bad she wants to create art and put music out for her fans a lot of times, because she feels this pressure. They’re always like, “What’s going on? What are you doing?” And I don’t think they realized how much she was going through with her family. Her mother is so strong and so supportive and is literally with her 24/7 at every rehearsal and every shoot, so of course we had to just stop and take a pause.
Once her mother beat it and got well, she literally was like, “Normani, get up on out there. Let’s do this, it’s time.” Even her grandmother is with them all the time. Woman empowerment and just being a strong woman is what Normani is about—her family, herself, her dancers, what she wants to portray in her art.
Which was enhanced by the fact that Cardi B was pregnant during the shoot!
It’s so funny because I had just done her “Up” video and the Grammy performance, and so I actually heard about her being pregnant before Normani or anybody else on the team knew. So [Normani] was like, “Cardi wants to get on the song!” and, mind you, this was happening while we were rehearsing for the video. So every scene was already perfectly thought out. So when she was like, “We’re going to put [Cardi] in the video,” I’m looking like, “Oh my God, she has no clue this woman is pregnant.” And I didn’t want to be the one to tell her, either. So I sat on that information as long as I could. She wanted her to dance and hang on wires and do all this stuff. I was like, “I got to tell you something.”
