Wicked: Breaking down the 'Dancing Through Life' sequence's filming

The 'Dancing Through Life' sequence in Wicked has won many hearts.

After all, the scene establishes the character of Jonathan Bailey's Prince Fiyero, where he breaks into this iconic dance. It has everything that is required to make it a notable sequence, in terms of its choreography, filming, set design, and the thematic importance of it in the film.

Wicked is a film where elements of theatre and cinema come together, where actual architecture and props are infused with VFX. After all, it is derived from a stage musical, so it is compelling to witness the essence of theatre blended in the medium of cinema.

Let us explore the details of the filming of the 'Dancing Through Life' sequence in Wicked.

Wicked: What happens in the 'Dancing Through Life' sequence?

In this sequence of Wicked, Prince Fiyero breaks into this dance in a library, as he sings "Dancing Through Life". Glinda joins him in the dance with the other students, whereas Elphaba does not join and also does not seem to be pleased by his dancing at all.

Fiyero is a newbie student who has been expelled from his previous school and thus has ended up here. So, as Jon M. Chu explains in an interview with Vanity Fair about what Fiyero is trying to convey through his dance, the director says: "But today he's here to say, Hey, guys, loosen up".

Basically, Prince Fiyero is urging everyone to unwind and is striving to break everyone free from any sort of rigidity and tight discipline in that school setting. In the interview, Jon M. Chu, along with the cinematographer of Wicked, Alice Brooks, explains the process of filming this notable scene.

The scene, along with a remarkable choreography, also has an incredible architecture, which plays a key role in the whole choreography of the song. Jonathan Bailey performs this scene with such ease, but the process and construction of the scene have been quite intricate.

While speaking to EW, the cinematographer of Wicked, Alice Brooks, also talked about the presence of the female gaze in the song, as we witness Glinda watching Fiyero in the dance sequence, and her 'romantic notion' about him as well.

One would witness Bailey glide over books, and he even opens the book covers with his feet while dancing. One of the biggest highlights of the scene is the rotating bookshelf, where a group of experts, including circus artistes, martial artists, traceurs, were gathered to perform the scenes of the tornado wheel inside the rotating bookshelf. The design of the spinning bookshelf has been done by the film's production designer, Nathan Crowley.

As per an interview with EW, director Jon M. Chu said that the circular shape of the rotating bookshelf is because the circle is a shape that is common in the world of Oz, and also because things are so methodical in this world. It gives a feeling of a clock, about which the director addressed by mentioning:

“I will neither confirm nor deny that it's a clock,”

"This is a rotating bookshelf because everything in Oz has a very circular shape to it. In the library, they don't have regular shelves. Nothing is regular in Oz, but at Shiz, the bookshelves are curved. And in this case, you walk up to get your book.”

"It's very dangerous", says Jon M. Chu about the Wicked: 'Dancing Through Life' sequence

This particular dance sequence in Wicked came with its own set of numerous challenges and dangers. While speaking with Vanity Fair, Jon M. Chu and Alice Brooks elucidated in detail about the perils that they had to keep in mind while filming the scenes of the rotating bookshelf, where one could even risk losing their lives! The director says:

“We had to convince a lot of people that it was worth spending this money on a set that spun […] and that it wouldn’t be dangerous. Because the weird thing about this one is these things are locked in, so if you get caught in between your head could get chopped off. So try having that conversation with the insurance company.

In the interview, they also added about the level of research, preparation, and safety measures they had to take to ensure the safety of the people there. The engineers were constantly supporting the performers as they stood at the back of the walls to maintain the speed of the spinning architecture.

To light up the space, around 224 light DENOs were used. A total of 495 lights were used. As per Alice Brooks, the dimensions of the space were:

The measurement of the floor to ceiling was 45 feet.
The center dome could almost reach up to 45 feet in height.
The set dimensions were: 185 feet long x 145 feet wide.

Jon M. Chu and Alice Brooks also elucidated the importance of gravity in the scene, which plays a vital role not only in the scene but in the film as well, as the director mentions:

This guy has to slide all the way down, the camera's moving in coordination, so you don't know where the center of gravity is. That's something that we always played in the beginning with this, relationship with gravity. That Elphaba had a very specific relationship with gravity. So we want to sort of physicalize it in this that he was sort of playing with that idea, just not in a magical power way.

There is a particular scene where a performer does this flip and lands up on the floor from a height, which seems surreal. As per the interview with EW's series 'It takes a village', the editors of the film Myron Kerstein revealed that there was no stitching of scenes there it was the same performer in a continuous scene who performed this high-stakes acrobatic scene with absolute finesse.

"Color is a huge theme throughout the original Wizard of Oz books", says Jon M. Chu about Wicked

In an interview with The Today Show, Jonathan Bailey has revealed that the filming of this sequence took a time of a week to complete the shooting of this scene. The spinning wheel itself took around 2 days to film. He explained the process by mentioning:

"The ['tornado wheel' setpiece] would have taken two days, which moved in three different sections,"

"We had a separate group of dancers who were parkour street runners. It was over a week to shoot this whole sequence. You train as hard as you can with the choreographer and the singing teachers so that you can then sustain that for ten days."

A lot of precision, planning, and care have been taken not only in the choreography, construction of the architecture, and in the filming department, but also in terms of the hair, makeup, and costume.

The costume designer of the film, Paul Tazewell, spoke with EW, mentioning that the colour 'blue' was associated with Prince Fiyero because of the fact that he is a prince. The fabrics were also made in a way that would be significant to his character, and would also be easy for Jonathan Bailey to do the intense movements.

Jon M. Chu, whilst speaking to Vanity Fair, talked about the importance of colour in Wicked. He explained:

"And in these colors, these blue colors, Alice worked very closely with Paul to figure out is this blue or is this green or is this sea green or what the heck is it? So these were very delicate. They, we didn't wanna step on Jonathan's blue and it couldn't be green 'cause I would step on Elphaba. So all the color plays very specific in here. And color is a huge theme throughout the original Wizard of Oz books."